Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares
Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares (The Mystery of Bulgarian Voices) is a 1975 compilation album of Bulgarian folk music, compiled by Swiss ethnomusicologist Marcel Cellier. The songs are performed by the Bulgarian State Television Female Vocal Choir, who were founded in 1952 and are nowadays also known as Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares. Four tracks were lifted from Filip Kutev's earlier compilation album, Music of Bulgaria: Ensemble of the Bulgarian Republic (Nonesuch, 1966), which in itself was a reissue of Ensemble de la République Bulgare (1955).
Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares became a global success, received many awards and has frequently been reissued. The 1988 re-release received the Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album (1990). It acquired many famous fans, like Linda Ronstadt, Graham Nash, Jerry Garcia (The Grateful Dead), Paul Simon, Kate Bush, Peter Murphy (Bauhaus), Elizabeth Fraser (Cocteau Twins), Bobby McFerrin, George Harrison and David Bowie.
Frank Zappa and Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares
Zappa was a fan of Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares too. [1] [2] In 1990, during his visit to Eastern Europe, he also attended a concert by the Bulgarian Women's Chorus, whose songs are featured on both Music of Bulgaria: Ensemble of the Bulgarian Republic and Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares.
Frank Zappa: "Well, I loved the music, but I went backstage after the concert, and it was very, very depressing, because it looked to me like the three male members of the entourage that were playing the musical instruments, the way they were dressed and the way they behaved backstage, it looked to me like they were secret police, and the behavior of the women, the way they were lined up in these little rows backstage to shake hands with people, it just seemed to me so controlled, and it was that ugly aspect of communism that was dangling over the backstage aura of the thing that really turned me off, but I still like the music."
Den Simms: "The music, that was good?"
Frank Zappa: "Fabulous".
Den Simms: "Yeah. Unfortunately the tickets had been sold out locally, where I live, and I didn't get a chance to see it, but I just recently ..."
Frank Zappa: "Well, you know what it was like ... you heard the CD?"
Den Simms: "I have just recently been turned on to recordings of them, and I was blown away. That's pretty unique stuff."
Frank Zappa: "Well, can you imagine walking into a room, and sitting down, and the lights go down, and here come twenty or thirty of these women, dressed in native costume? No "one, two, three, four", no big count-off or anything. No conductor in the first part. They just lined up and what came out was an exact replica of that CD. In tune!" (...) Boom! Singing! I couldn't believe it. There were a couple of minor fuck-ups later on in the show, and then, they had a woman who was conducting the chorus on the second half, where they were doing it not in native costume but in concert dress, but it was astonishing, because anybody who has ever tried to carry a tune, and stay in tune, with no musical accompaniment, has to respect that many people, who sang that kind of harmony, totally on the beat. Just fabulous. It was amazing."
- Quoted from They're Doing the Interview of the Century, Part 2, Den Simms, Eric Buxton, Rob Samler, Society Pages, June 1990.
