Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares Vol. 1 came packaged in minimalist designs, with abstract artwork and just its title on the jacket. Nonesuch’s naïve depiction of Bulgarian dress against a star-filled sky instilled an astro-romantic sensibility. 4AD’s sleeve, with its vague suggestion of clouds, imposed an alliance with the heavenly. Neither album included translations of the lyrics, photos of the ensemble, nor any reference to who they were as people at all: no indication of age, location, or musical training. Aside from the tracklist, the releases offered scarcely any information at all.
Without any historical detail to orient these voices, their singing possesses a kind of beauty that swells into terror, like the vaguely unsettling feeling of setting foot in a cathedral. They are pinched into a bright, almost surgical nasality or burst loose into grand, sideways arcs, flaring out in a feral yelp. Together, their vocals tend to rush higher and higher; quicker and quicker; becoming more and more triumphant. And then they fall. And then they devastate.
The roots of these songs, though, are more prosaic. In Bulgaria, village music was typically sung by peasants while tending to agriculture and husbandry; at weddings; and to express national pride. Women who worked in shops sang together in bellowing, polyphonic unison. Their singing was not conventionally melodic by Western standards, but rather summed up by the word “izvika”: to cry out. They also used the word “buchi” to describe their own tonal quality—the same word Bulgarians use for the sound of cow’s lowing.
Most fundamental to Bulgarian village music was its relationship between melody and drone. This layer endured well into the 20th century and became the most prominent feature of the Le Mystère recordings. The singers’ buchi drone formed the core of the music’s harmonic language, which relied mostly on unisons, major seconds, and minor thirds. Within this narrow range, the singers created an airless intimacy where adjacent tones clanged sharply against one another. Like notes crowded on a staff, the ensemble sat closely together when they sang. When Kate Bush later sang with them, in 1989, they even held one another.
