{"id":6726,"date":"2022-06-22T20:53:53","date_gmt":"2022-06-22T18:53:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/svjmedia.nl\/internationaljournalism\/?p=6726"},"modified":"2022-06-23T00:16:04","modified_gmt":"2022-06-22T22:16:04","slug":"chalga-bulgarias-sexmoney-soaked-pop-folk-you-either-love-or-hate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/svjmedia.nl\/internationaljournalism\/6726\/chalga-bulgarias-sexmoney-soaked-pop-folk-you-either-love-or-hate\/","title":{"rendered":"Chalga \u2013 Bulgaria\u2018s Sex&Money-Soaked Pop-Folk Divide"},"content":{"rendered":"
The entrance fee is average, the p<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>rice of beer<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span> acceptable, yet it looks like an exclusive upper-class club. Noble interior in dark and gold colours, fancy shirts, sleek hair-do, glamorous yet revealing dresses, high-heels, jewellery. In Club Biad they play Chalga, a controversial Bulgarian variant of pop-folk upon which the population is divided. Is it <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>a<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span> bane of Bulgarian culture, promoting loose morals, irresponsible promiscuity and materialism? Or an expression of deep human desires and heartaches, a sound to finally let go to? I\u2019m here to i<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>nvestigate<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>. And all around everyone\u2019s dancing or clapping their hands to the beat of a love song I do not understand.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n C<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>halga came up in around \u201889 and was forbidden under the socialist regime. The incorporation of other Balkan countries\u2019, Arabic, Turkish, and Gypsy musical traditions didn\u2019t go well with the ruling party\u2019s vision of a mono-ethnic state. Not to speak of the lyrics dealing with sex, drugs and corruption. All against socialist morals. So in the early years those things that may seem superficial or hedonistic about Chalga now symbolized a newly found freedom. For example having your own business and making lots of money or wearing scarce clothes without being chased by the police simply weren\u2019t possible before. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>This explains the Chalga tradition of showering the dance floor with napkins, throwing them in the air like you\u2019d imagine a crazy millionaire doing it with money. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Throughout the 90s and early 2000s Chalga remained a genre in which boundaries are overstepped. In 1999 Azis, probably the most famous Chalga singer, dropped his first album. He is openly homosexual and for a long time displayed a lasciviously flamboyant, cross-dresseresque image to the public. Keep in mind that this happened in a to this day very conservative eastern European society. Check out one of his music videos<\/a> to get an idea of his art.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n[aesop_image img=”https:\/\/svjmedia.nl\/internationaljournalism\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/378\/2022\/06\/places27050aa766b5cccc8d5af8e3f26c5c75.png” panorama=”off” align=”center” lightbox=”on” captionsrc=”custom” caption=”Saturday night in a Chalga club” captionposition=”left” revealfx=”off” overlay_revealfx=”off”]\n From what I\u2019ve been told modern Chalga is more provocative then ever. Though not in a political or socially conscious way any more. What provokes the old and the conservative, the squares nowadays is the more and more rampant and explicit display of the sex, drugs, partying lifestyle. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>That this goes against traditional family values is obvious. And it\u2019s not exactly the feminist type of liberated sexuality either. More the \u201cI\u2019m gonna steal your boyfriend\/girlfriend\u201d and \u201cI\u2019m making lots of money and fucking lots of [insert derogatory for women]\u201d type. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n