Abstract:
In this chapter, we will examine the shifting meanings of the terms 'chisto' (lit. pure/clean) and 'narodna' (lit. popular/folk), used today in both expert and popular discourses in Bulgaria to refer to what is supposed to be 'folklore', taking into account their historicity, intertextuality and interdiscursivity. That is, using a sociolinguistic approach (Heller 2002; Canut et al. 2019), we will locate the use of the terms in specific historical contingencies and consider what the goals and intentions of the speakers are when they use these terms. In the first section, we will see how, during the communist period, an institutional definition of 'chista narodna muzika' (lit. 'pure folk music') was given by experts to define a form of music that was considered essentially Bulgarian and thus to delimit the boundaries of the so-called narod (lit. 'nation'). We will observe that - in a process of erasure (Gal and Irvine, 2019) - this music was "purified" of all elements considered "too oriental", such as ornaments called "turtsism" (Buchanan, 2006) or "tsiganiya" (Peicheva, 1998). We will then consider how, with the event of demokratsiya (lit. 'democracy'), followed by that of globalisation, the same concepts have been reappropriated (Silverman, 2012) and resignified (Butler, 2006) by individual actors to adapt them to new values and needs. By examining how Roma musicians in Kotel use the terms "chista" (lit. pure/clean) and "authentichna" (lit. authentic) to describe their way of playing music, we will hypothesise that by staging a genuine "performance of authenticity" (Lemon, 2000), they are able not only to challenge official categorisations and the stereotypes associated with them, but also to claim their place in Bulgarian society as active contributors to the transmission and development of their culture.

Camilla Salvatore is a Ph.D. student at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University in Prague (supervisor: Yasar Abu Ghosh) in General Anthropology and at the Université de Paris Cité (supervisor: Cécile Canut) in Sociolinguistics. In her dissertation - tentatively titled "We speak clean Gypsy, I am a pure Roma" performing difference through linguistic and artistic practices in Kotel, Bulgaria - she analyses how Roma residents of Kotel position themselves through their artistic and linguistic practices in relation to the official discourse promoting the city as a "model of Roma integration". She holds a Master's degree in Anthropology from the University of Turin and a Bachelor's degree in Philosophy from the University of Milan.
Contact: salvatorecamilla8@gmail.com

Carol Silverman is a cultural anthropologist and folklorist who has worked on Balkan music and culture as a researcher, teacher, activist and performer for over 30 years. Focusing on Bulgaria and Macedonia, as well as Balkan Romani immigrants to North America and Western Europe, she has explored the relationship between politics, ethnicity, ritual, music, and gender. She also explores the phenomenon of 'gypsy' music concerning issues of appropriation, representation and the negotiation of identities in the global music market. Her book Romani Routes: Cultural Politics and Balkan Music in Diaspora was published by OUP in 2012 with an extensive accompanying website. It won the Alan Merriam Book Prize of the Society for Ethnomusicology. Her new book, Ivo Papasov's Balkanology (Bloomsbury, 2021), traces Bulgarian wedding music from its inception in the 1970s, through its emergence as a world music phenomenon in the 1990s, to its reconfiguration in the present. Her research has been supported by the Guggenheim, IREX, NEH, ACLS and NCSEER. She is also a professional performer and teacher of Balkan music and works with the NGO Voice of Roma.
Contact: csilverm@uoregon.edu