The Long Goodbye: Part 3

Bulgaria. Third in our series featuring the music of the 27 EU Member States, and one of only three that I haven't been to yet. Hopefully I'll get a chance to put that right. The word on the street is that Plovdiv is poptastic.

Outside Bulgaria, Trio Bulgarka are probably the artists of whom you are most likely to have heard. They appeared on a Kate Bush album in the late 1980s and along with Marta Sebestyen from Hungary were at the forefront of a brief craze for East European folk music around that time. I'm not sure the attempt to incorporate (then) modern sounds works in their favour, but it is certainly an improvement on the Singing Nun's disco period, which we featured last time out.

"20-ti Vek" - Shturtcite

"Ne Me Gleday Taka Momche" - Kamelia Todorova

"Pustono Ludo I Mlado" - Trio Bulgarka

"Proksima" - Srebrynite Grivni

"Sbogom Klas" - Rositsa Kirilova & Agrirovi Brothers

That is all pretty old stuff, so let's try and bring things a bit more up to date. The word on the trendier end of the aforementioned street is that Bulgarian Trap is all the rage, so here is some to sample. To my inexpert ears it sounds a lot like the Trio Bulgarka track. We then go back to 2007 to enjoy what may be the only time a Jew's harp (or the Bulgarian equivalent) has featured at Eurovision.