This summer, I had the lucky opportunity to learn the basics of kaval from Valeri Georgiev at the EEFC Mendocino Balkan Camp. I recently spoke with him over Skype to learn a bit about why he came to play the instrument and the role music has had in his life.
Georgiev grew up “a city boy” in Ruse, a city along the Danube on Bulgaria’s northern border with Romania. He was not raised in a musical family, but rather came upon folk music almost by accident. There was a building he would pass on his way home from school that often had interesting sounds coming from inside. One day, toward the end of 6th grade, his curiosity got the better of him and he walked up the steps to see what was going on. Once inside, he saw that one of his closest friends was there. The friend offered Georgiev his kaval and asked if he wanted to try it. And that’s how it all began – once Georgiev made a sound (which anyone who has tried kaval knows can be a herculean feat), he was hooked.
His first teacher, Marin Subev, was “a real kaval player who grew up in a village.” Subev had learned his repertoire from other musicians and only later joined an ensemble and learned how to read music. He had never had formal musical education, but he made his own instruments and knew local repertoire. During the time he worked with Subev, Georgiev also began to “open his ears to the folk music around.” For example, the two main radio stations of the Bulgarian National Radio would alternate each playing a half an hour of folk music, so Georgiev could switch between the two to listen. As this evidences, Bulgaria’s Soviet-style communist government “took good care of the arts in general and had a vision for it” at the time, something I described in this post last month.
After about a year and a half, Georgiev decided that he wanted to pursue folk music professionally. Though he had started playing at an older age than was typical, he applied to and was accepted at the Kotel Music School, a high school about 150 km south of Ruse, which he then attended for five years. Just like classical musicians, the students there had piano, music theory, harmony, history of music, and history of arts classes. The faculty represented both the “old school” and the “new school” styles of folk music, the latter of which was still developing at the time. The “old school” of playing was considered the basic foundation that everybody must learn before being able to incorporate other elements and influences.
In addition to their classes, the students learned a lot from each other. Since they had grown up all over Bulgaria, they represented different regional styles and repertoire. They formed small groups and would accompany singers. During pochivki (breaks) in classes, as soon as the teacher left the classroom, the students would start playing. “There is always someone sitting on the piano accompanying, someone singing, and someone playing another instrument, and this is like for 10 minutes, and the break is over, and everything stops.” Not only did they play music together, but the students also formed close, lifelong friendships.
Kristian Alexandrov, Jazz Piano and Valeri Georgiev, Kaval
After Kotel, Georgiev and about a third of his classmates went on to AMTII, the academy in Plovdiv that is serving as my affiliate institution here in Bulgaria. Those that did not go to AMTII either decided to dive into the professional sphere right away or to pursue an alternate career. Georgiev chose to go to AMTII because he “wanted to go further and learn more.” Since there were two other folk high schools feeding into the Academy, Shiroka Luka (officially, the National School of Folk Arts “Shiroka Luka”) and the Pleven School (National School of Arts “Panayot Pipkov,” Pleven), he got to play with different musicians and make new friends.
Plovdiv was itself an important part of the AMTII experience. “Outside of the Academy, there is another Academy,” Georgiev explained. The audience around Plovdiv knew a lot, and would offer feedback and corrections regarding tempo, the specifics of different verses, and which intros should go with which songs. These “correct” versions of classic tunes were important staples of the wedding band repertoire. Georgiev found wedding music very exciting because there were many opportunities to perform, work with different instruments, meet different people, and to play very loudly, thanks to the amplification of a sound system. “I was very lucky to live in this time, when it was flourishing, the wedding music. There was work for everyone, every musician.”
Georgiev graduated from AMTII in 1990, just months after “the change” of November 1989. Though he was offered a place in the Philip Kotev Ensemble, he was also recruited to play back in his hometown, and he took the latter placement with his parents’ encouragement. In Ruse, “the traditions of the folk instruments were not very developed, so I had a very hard time, but I think I did very well, just to pave the path for people who came after me.” He first played in and later became the music director for an 8-member orchestra that performed with a big dance ensemble, now known as the Folk Theater Naiden Kirov. The ensemble was very successful and toured internationally for at least two months out of an average year. They were innovative in that they used dancers and actors to tell coherent narratives rather than just performing choreography. Georgiev also simultaneously performed with many different bands and the ensemble Orkester Horo.
His career was going well and he was performing actively, but when the visa lottery gave him the opportunity to move to the USA in 2000, he decided to go. “After the changing of the system in the 1990s, the situation started changing very fast, so we were in a big recession, and they started closing ensembles supported by the government and the municipalities. And the weddings, there were not as many any more. Many musicians, they just quit being a musician. Many others, they just decided to play out of Bulgaria, and not perform in Bulgaria.” He knew he would need to pursue other work once he was in the US, but he brought his kaval along “just in case, to have it.”
Though he now has a different full-time job because he can no longer support himself with kaval, Georgiev performs with his band Lyuti Chushki (Hot Peppers), has several students, and teaches at seminars for organizations like EEFC. If it were possible, he wishes he could still play full-time. But his love of music has not faded. “Music, it’s part of your life. It’s not a job, it’s not a profession; it is something that you have necessity, you have need to perform, to play, and to go and improve yourself and challenge yourself, and play with better musicians than you, and you can learn from them, and have an audience who can enjoy or criticize you.”
Teachers: Marin Subev, Georgi Penev, Lyuben Dossev
Musical Influences: Marin Subev, Nikola Ganchev, Stoyan Velichkov, Dragan Karapchanski, Georgi Penev, Matio Dobrev, Theodosi Spasov, Nedyalko Nedyalkov, Georgi Petrov, Petar Ralchev