Bulgaria's unaccompanied choral folk music is organic, sophisticated, hypnotic, and mildly disturbing. It is made up of richly pungent melodic strands layered over a supporting drone until they overlap and blend, creating intervals that sound much like Western harmonies. Similar parallel overtones also occur in the Sacred Harp tradition of the Southern United States and in Tuvan throat singing. Cosmic Voices is made up of 21 women, and their voices have a strident, nasal intonation absorbed from nearby Macedonia and Turkey. The compositions can be infectiously gay, mysterious, or even both at the same time. The lively dance tunes are full of hair-raising rhythmic shifts and punctuated by exhortations and exuberant shrieks, while the spacious, dissonant slower pieces unfold and reassemble like the shifting colors of a kaleidoscope. The album was recorded under ideal acoustic conditions, so that the ensemble emerges as a miracle of resonance and clarity. --Christina Roden

Our informants (musical sources) were chosen because of their wide repertoire, which often included music from those communities with whom the Sephardim co-existed. We know that some Yugoslavian cantors studied in Italy and brought back Italian Art songs, that Turkish instrumental musicians performed at Sephardic weddings in Bulgaria, that Yugoslavian and Turkish folk songs often turn up dressed in Judeo-Spanish, and that Balkan folk rhythms drive the wedding repertoire.The Romanzas (ballads) which remembered the “old country,” Spain, remained an integral part of the repertoire; the coplas hearken back even further to the land of Israel, to Biblical legend and holiday ritual.

Voice of the Turtle‘s performance practice employs an open approach, ranging from authentic presentations of the songs in versions close to those of the original performers (which could be joyfully appreciated by any ethnomusicologist), to personal interpretations, almost original compositions by the group’s members, which appear in modern arrangements. The result is a synthesis of the two trends which co-exist in the process of oral transmission: preservation and re-creation.

Part of Sounds of the World Series.