Abstract: This paper deals with the construction of the national canon of cultural heritage in Bulgaria, while at the same time problematizing the (non)inclusion of minority cultures in it. This tension is explored through the case of traditional Bulgarian mumming (kukeri), whose heritagization involved complex processes of selective appropriation and symbolic reshaping. They reveal the prioritization of the “prestigious” ancient origins (Thracian or Slavic) of the tradition and the parallel silencing of the “Oriental” connections at the margins of Europe. Thus, the institutionalization of the iconic status of the kukeri masquerade illuminates how the powerful imperatives of Europeanization and de-Ottomanization have framed academic, cultural, and political activities in Bulgaria since the late 19th century, and contributed to the nationalistic reinterpretation of heritage among its communities and practitioners.

Keywords: mumming, Thracian heritage, Ottoman heritage, Muslim heritage, Romani heritage, de-Ottomanization–Europeanization

 

 

The kukeri custom comes from the depths of time, when the Mother Goddess, personifying the Earth and the Cosmos, goddess of the eternal cycle – of conception, death and rebirth, multifaceted and multi-named: Cybele, Zerynthia, Cottyto, Bendis, Hipta, Mysa, Hera, Artemis, Athena, Hestia, Hecate, gave birth to the Sun: Zibelthiurdos, Zalmoxis, Zagreus, Sabazius, Apollo, Dionysus. ...

Kukerstvo is a direct descendant of the part of the Dionysian Mysteries that was accessible to mere mortals; the participants were uninitiated, but believers.

It is not an exaggeration to say that the spread of the kukeri traditions coincided almost completely with the boundaries of the erstwhile Odrysian basileia, the largest state association of the Thracians. (Kukerlandia, 2009)

This quote is part of a description of Bulgarian mummers and mumming – generically called kukeri and kukerstvo – on the official website of the International Masquerade Festival “Kukerlandia”, which has been held in the city of Yambol every year since 2000 (Fig. 1). The story of “the oldest masquerade tradition in the world” reveals the ancient and prestigious connections of the masquerade. Its unprestigious, embarrassing, and dangerous connections (after Aleksieva, 2012) are in turn evident in the following incident at an international folklore festival held in Sofia in 2008. Then a visiting mumming group from the Pernik region met with disapproval from some observers, as it included two female participants dancing the kyuchek and playing the traditional figure of the Gypsy woman (Fig. 2).^[1] The president of the festival, a professional choreographer, denounced this element of the performance as a “distortion” of and “sacrilege against folk art” (News.dir.bg, 2008a), and several online publications expressed outrage at “how this so very Oriental folklore could be declared ours and, what’s more, before the eyes of the assembled nations” (emphasis added):

Two big-bosomed girls dressed as Romani women danced the kyuchek until the procession of participants in the Fourth International Festival “Sofia Spring 2008” reached the National Theatre. Their dance aroused interest but also bewilderment among the people watching the authentic folklore procession of international ensembles. (News.dir.bg, 2008b)

The media’s sanction against the “wide necklines” and “Gypsy wiggles” also found support among readers’ comments. Some of them emphasized that “Bulgarian women have never danced with a bare belly – this is Turkification of things Bulgarian” and that “[a]uthentic Bulgarian folklore is being entirely consciously and deliberately destroyed and Turkish-Gypsy elements are being inserted into it” (News.dir.bg, 2008a). In this line of thought, the kukeri’s kyuchek was also identified as a manifestation of popfolk, which pollutes traditions.^[2]

Fig. 1. Kukeri from the town of Straldzha, Southeastern Bulgaria, at the masquerade festival in Yambol, 2017. Photo: The author.

Fig. 2. Gypsy woman from the survakari group from the village of Lyulin, Pernik region, 2017. Photo: The author.

All this goes to show that both among the mummers and in Bulgarian society at large, there are certain notions about what is “ours”, that is, Bulgarian, traditional and authentic. It is also evident that what is perceived as Oriental is outside the boundaries set by the normative culture – the kyuchek is incompatible with pure folklore and it is inexplicable how “this dance is associated with the Bulgarian kukeri” (News.dir.bg, 2008b; emphasis added). The views expressed are evidence of what Stefan Detchev (2010) calls the intimization of invention: they are a popularized, reworked version of one of the most influential scholarly interpretations about the ancient pagan origins and fertility-oriented essence of Bulgarian mumming. The appropriation and circulation of this theory among practitioners and other social groups exemplifies the pan-European dimension of the popular Frazerism phenomenon, as thematized by Alessandro Testa (2017). Furthermore, this theory has to do – although mostly implicitly – with the ambivalent presence of Oriental elements and influences in Bulgarian culture. On the one hand, scholarship has linked the kukeri masquerade to more ancient rituals, while the nation-state has transformed selected fragments of folk culture into national heritage, purging them of unprestigious influences and attributes. The living nature of heritage, however, has allowed it to combine the valorized ancient roots with stigmatized foreign elements. If we return to the so-called Gypsy figures in kukeri groups, for example, who were also criticized during the folklore festival mentioned above, we should recall that such characters were already recorded in the first ethnographic descriptions of the late 19th century (e.g., Shivachov, 1890: 275). They are present in many parts of Bulgaria (and across Europe) today, too, therefore the performers confidently rejected the criticism against them, pointing out that “the group has always presented itself in this way” (News.dir.bg, 2008b). Along with the kyuchek, which often remains hidden from the festival stages and the gaze of the specialist panel of judges, today these characters evoke Michael Herzfeld’s (2005) concept of cultural intimacy.

It is precisely these complex and dynamic relations in the negotiation of the Bulgarian national heritage that will be the subject of this paper.^[3] They will be examined through the example of the traditional rural masquerades, which have enjoyed increasing popularity in recent decades. Known by the generic name kukeri (sing. kuker), these annual masked door-to-door processions are significant festivities for many villages in different parts of Bulgaria. There are also quite a few cases of their contemporary “revival” and even of the creation of masquerade groups in places where there is no evidence that such practices existed in the past. It is also clear that the kukeri masquerade has long left its pre-modern rural environment – it is a living practice, but it is also conceptualized as a valuable heritage at the local and national level, it has acquired the status of an all-Bulgarian emblem, and serves for legitimization and comparison with the rest of the world. Kukeri – freed from the burden of unprestigious characters – took part, for example, in the opening ceremony of Plovdiv as European Capital of Culture in 2019 (Fig. 3), as well as in events related to the 2018 Bulgarian Presidency of the Council of the European Union, and kukeri masks and styling were used by Elitsa Todorova and Stoyan Yankulov for their participation in the 2013 Eurovision Song Contest in Sweden (Fig. 4). Following an official nomination by the Bulgarian state, in 2015 UNESCO inscribed the Surova folk feast in Pernik region on its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

Fig. 3. A moment of the opening ceremony of Plovdiv – European Capital of Culture 2019. Source: Plovdiv 2019, photo: Alexander Bogdan Thompson.

Fig. 4. Elitsa Todorova and Stoyan Yankulov onstage at Eurovision 2013. Source: EBU.

Although they are normally presented as natural, the facts sketched above are actually the result of purposeful efforts and ambiguous processes. Suffice it to recall the Bulgarian elites’ vehement disavowal of the rural traditional culture and way of life, which from the mid-19th and early 20th centuries onwards came to be perceived as the opposite to European modernization (Gavrilova, 1999: 22–23; Kiossev, 2005: 393–394). This made it necessary, again under the influence of the Romantic ideas coming from “Europe”, to take special measures to document and preserve folklore, which was threatened by the advent of the new civilization and had come to be seen as part of the national culture (Shishmanov, 1889: 2–6ff; see also Detchev and Vukov, 2010: 197–203, 210–212; Iliev, 2019: 32–35). Even more telling are some data from later field studies. In 1948, regarding Kukerovden (Kukeri’s Day) in Karnobat, Southeastern Bulgaria, it was recorded that “no one from the town performs [the kukeri custom] anymore”, and that the continuers of this “old Bulgarian custom” were only the Christian Roma, whose neighbourhood was located “[s]outhwest of the town, behind the small hill”.^[4] There is also evidence that the role of the kuker was considered shameful among the ethnographic group of the Ruptsi in Strandzha region and was therefore given to a Romani man, a person from another village, or a poor person (Grebenarova, 1996: 323). A negative attitude is also evidenced by the initial bans on mumming imposed locally after 9 September 1944, when the new communist regime in Bulgaria attacked the religious nature of the rituals associated with the church calendar (Katsarova, 1970: 436; Kraev, 1985: 45). Before the first national urban masquerade festival was held in Pernik in 1966, the idea of creating such a festival was initially dismissed precisely because the significance and representative nature of this heritage were not self-evident: “This certainly can’t be representative of culture in the Pernik district!”^[5] In the 1970s, it was already recorded in the villages of Strandzha region that the “number of volunteers who wanted to don the heavy and unpleasant animal-skin costumes [had decreased] – moreover, they considered it offensive” (Dimitrova, 1984: 169).

In other words, the valorization of Bulgarian mumming was not unquestionable and has its historical traces. This problematic, however, is still underresearched in Bulgarian scholarly literature, in which there is a lack of attention to the heritagization and attendant reconfiguration of mumming.^[6] What has been said so far also explains to some extent the positioning of this study in the field of invented traditions (Hobsbawm, 1983), which at first glance seems banal and simplifying. The studies on Bulgarian mumming are many in number and, as Ilia Iliev (2017: 25–26) notes, the latter largely persist and are constantly expanding their range precisely because of the work of ethnographers and folklorists. A significant part of their publications, as will become clear later, deal with the so-called classical rites and their ancient origins. In this context, it is noteworthy that the role of scholars is very rarely problematized in Bulgaria, even though it is crucial not only for documenting and analysing folklore but also for its expert modelling – especially when this is done along ideological lines and in pursuit of specific state tasks. This issue has become even more important in the present, now that we are seeing a sort of retraditionalization in the Bulgarian public and private spheres (Luleva, 2020); now that reference to the ethno-national and the “primordial” is becoming a point (the only one) of consensus of Bulgarian identity (Mineva, 2019).^[7]

It is well known that the appropriation of folklore by national culture and assigning it representative functions led to its essentialization and revision (see, e.g., Silverman, 1983; Buchanan, 2006). Traces of such revisions can also be sought in various directions in Bulgarian mumming, but the focus of this paper is limited to the procedures of constructing its national character. To this end, two tendencies will be examined in parallel: association of the kukeri masquerade with the ancestral culture of the Bulgarians, and especially with Thracian antiquity in the context of the latter’s institutionalization as a national antiquity; and the opposite tendency, of dissociation from certain influences – Ottoman, Turkish, Muslim, Romani – and their subsequent silencing. Therefore, the question of achieving the purity of the national heritage is of key importance. It is known that “[t]he authentically native also played censoring functions: like the ‘European’ and the ‘civilized’, it was sharply opposed to everything not completely Bulgarian, mixed, colourful, impure, and turned it into ridiculous-shameful-disgusting” (Kiossev, 2005: 394). From this perspective, it is also important to thematize the place of minorities and their cultures within the national heritage. They usually turn out to be symbolic pollutants (Herzfeld, 2005: 105) of the “natural” patrimonial canon of the nation, if we view dirt “as matter out of place. … [As] the by-product of a systematic ordering and classification of matter, in so far as ordering involves rejecting inappropriate elements” (Douglas, 1966: 36). In this sense, maintaining the established order requires that heritage be purified, with the very discourse on the purity of folklore often stemming from distinctly homogenizing policies serving the nation-state (Buchanan, 2006: 283–313; Levy, 2010: 531–534; Silverman, 2012: 128–130, 140–145).

Starting from these assumptions, this study will outline the interpretation and modelling of kukeri as part of Bulgarian cultural heritage. To this end, examples are given from years-long research and academic practice, as well as from methodological work on the symbolic and substantive reconfiguration of masquerade in the period of late socialism. Next, some of the effects of those interventions among the heritage bearers are presented. The study examines published scholarly and popular-science texts as well as archival materials, supplemented by ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with practitioners and experts.

Kukeri: An Acid Test for Heritages

The scholarly literature on traditional masking in Bulgaria is considerable.^[8] Here I will focus on those publications that have a bearing on the inheritance of the kukeri and their association with the national ancestors of the Bulgarians. I should point out that I neither claim nor aim to substantively reconstruct these positions; rather, I am guided by the understanding that “[e]xpert values and knowledge … often set the agendas or provide the epistemological frameworks that define debates about the meaning and nature of the past and its heritage” (Smith, 2006: 51).

Local masquerade customs were noticed by the Bulgarian intelligentsia in the period of nation-building in the late 19th century, within the context of the Romantic efforts to prove the existence of an original national identity. It is characteristic of this phase of identity construction that the people, and especially the peasantry, is seen as “a living fossil that guarantees the introduction of great ancestors”, where “not only the legitimate entry into history but also the designation of territory is at stake” (Thiesse, 2011: 155). It is in this spirit that Georgi S. Rakovski (1821–1867), one of the founders of Bulgarian national mythology, first drew attention to the kukeri. In the context of the beliefs of the Bulgarians, he wondered if Kuk was the god of the wild. He also noted that “in some villages, they play Kukuri: games that are utterly wild. They leap around frantically, dress in old rags and sing silly songs. In Kotel old women still celebrate Kuk Day, it is the first Monday of Lent” (Rakovski, 1857: 172). In his Index, or manual on how to seek and find the oldest features of our way of life (in Bulgarian), Rakovski (1859: 10) appealed for recording the rites that are performed on Kukovden. Later, he examined kukeri – along with the other folk festivals – as pre-Christian “antiquities” coming from Indian mythology (Rakovski, 1865: 22–23ff; cf. Arnaudov, 1972: 7–9).

This last again testifies to the fact that Rakovski’s ethnographic pursuits were inseparable from his political ones (Iliev, 2019: 16–31) and followed his “Indo-European” theory of the origins of the Bulgarians (see Aretov, 2001: 64–72). In his essay on Rakovksi, the authoritative Bulgarian folklorist Mihail Arnaudov (1878–1978) (2004a) pointed out that “without solid training and without a sense of what is permissible in scholarly inquiry, he indulged in bold fantasizing that we can understand and excuse today only in the light of the premises of his national programme”.

Such criticism of this “Romantic patriot” (Arnaudov, 1972: 7) can actually be found earlier and applies to the writings of the National Revival commentators on traditions who eagerly sought historical and mythological reminiscences aimed at awakening the “national spirit” (Shishmanov, 1889: 12–13). After Bulgaria’s 1878 Liberation from Ottoman rule and with the professionalization of Bulgarian ethnography, the view of and attitude towards pre-modern culture changed in line with the needs of the new nation-state and its aspirations to join the cultural community of modern European nations (Papuchiev, 2012: 97–124). In this changed context, interest in kukeri grew. In 1888, the Ministry of Public Education produced and circulated Provisional Rules for Scientific and Literary Enterprises (Predgovor, 1889: vii), as a result of which a number of accounts of traditional masking practices in various settlements were published in Sbornik za narodni umotvoreniya (Collection of folklore) (e.g., Shivachov, 1890; Shivachev, 1891: 273–274; Zlatev, 1900; Marinov, 1914: 330–331, 333–334, 373–378; Zahariev 1918: 168–172). The first edition of this collection included Ivan Shishmanov’s (1889: 45) programmatic study “The meaning and task of our ethnography” (in Bulgarian), which also mentioned that attention should be paid to the kukeri within the framework of the more general problem of rites and folk games and performances. In the late 19th century, recording the disappearing folklore was a means both of ethnographically mapping the nation and of creating its modern culture and identity (Papuchiev, 2012: 97–124). In his study, however, Shishmanov (1889: 5–6) also criticized the patriotic interpretations:

Science has proved to us that a large part of this paternal heritage, which consists of songs, proverbs, tales, costumes, etc., has not been collected on native soil, and is not entirely original, as many in this country imagine; often, it has been bought in exchange for similar works, or plundered, or in many cases copied from foreign models.

Here we can clearly see the clash between the two perspectives on heritage, which coexist and intertwine depending on the political and social context, giving rise to complex and shifting ideological configurations (cf. Thiesse, 2011: 176). Contrary to the nationalist tendency, Shishmanov’s (1889: 28) positivist comparative approach focused on the difficulties ethnographers faced precisely in the context of working with ancient heritage:

What a mixture of tribes: Thraco-Illyrians, Greeks, Celts, Romans, Goths, Slavs, Turks, etc. Who will define the elements of each of those peoples in their descendants? Will history give us the soundest criteria for accomplishing this task? Probably not. History is in this case a dangerous and biased lawyer who does not forget even the slightest insult and constantly inflames the passions of his client.

Or, regarding ornaments:

But besides the Byzantine elements, there are also others in our ornaments – Persian, Turkish, and Arabic – which are even less known, and which deserve to be studied in order to see what was the extent of the influence of those foreign elements on our culture in this respect, too. (Shishmanov, 1889: 56–57)

Shishmanov’s critical approach and his awareness of Bulgarian and foreign studies later gave Arnaudov (2004b) reason to assess him as “the first sober historian of the ‘living antiquity’”:

It is as if a Romantic from the era of the Brothers Grimm and Brentano were resurrected in his person, the only sensitive difference being that the enthusiasm has been tempered by a rigorous scientific critique that has rejected many of the fantasies and hypotheses of the erstwhile interpreters of folk poetry and mythology.

This description is in unequivocal contrast with Arnaudov’s opinion about the “extremely tendentious patriotic conclusions” of Rakovski, in whom “the scientific restoration of the past suffers ... from ... patriotic excess and lack of a methodical approach” (ibid.).^[9]

However, the question about the origins of the kukeri masquerade, posed by Rakovski, remained outstanding and provoked new reflections. One answer was proposed by Jonas Basanavičius (Ivan Basanovich, 1851–1927), a Lithuanian doctor and public figure working in Bulgaria at the time. A lover of history, philology, and folklore, he argued for the Thracian origins of the kukeri, looking for the etymology of the word kuk and linking it to the Lithuanian deity Kaukas. The distinguished Bulgarian ethnographer Dimitar Marinov (1846–1940) (1907: 21–24), who called Basanavičius “an excellent Thracologist”, published the latter’s hypothesis in his article “Kukovi or kukeri” (in Bulgarian). In it Marinov also published his own material on masking in different parts of Bulgaria, thereby offering the first more comprehensive account on the subject. His research on this part of “living antiquity” also had a bearing on the formation of collections and the creation of exhibitions at the then newly founded National Ethnographic Museum (Fig. 5 and 6), of which he became the first director. Ultimately, he cautiously endorsed the view that the custom was Thracian, without failing, however, to note the existence of similar traditions in other parts of Europe (ibid.: 27).

Fig. 5 and 6. Masquerade costumes, early 20th century. Source: Marinov, 1907 / Archive of the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies with Ethnographic Museum at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (IEFSEM – BAS) / British Library, EAP103/1/3/14/6; EAP103/1/3/14/7.

However, the founder of Bulgarian professional Thracology, Gavril Katsarov (Gawril Kazarow, 1874–1958) (1907), remained sceptical about this view. He criticized the etymological hypotheses of Basanavičius and concluded that the claim about the Thracian origins of the kukeri masquerade could hardly be defended: “it has indeed been proven that Dionysus is a Thracian god and that the Greeks borrowed him from the Thracians: but there are few elements in his cult about which we can say with certainty that they are purely Thracian”. He also recalled that “the Thracian cult of Dionysus, adopted by the Greeks, was transformed by them and may have been mixed with other foreign elements, therefore it is difficult to distinguish the purely Thracian elements” (ibid.: 457). This position of the historian reflects his more general initial reservation about the role of the Thracians in Bulgarian genealogy (Marinov, 2016: 146–150). He therefore also noted the need for more precise conclusions to be drawn from a broad religious-historical and ethnographic basis. In this regard, he used an account of the carnival on Cheese Monday among the Greek community in the town of Vize in Eastern Thrace (now Turkey), published by the British archaeologist R. C. Dawkins (1906). The latter, in turn, was intrigued by an earlier account by the Greek poet Georgios Vizyenos, himself a native of Vize.^[10] Hence Katsarov (1907: 457; cf. Raychevski, 1993: 14) assumed that there were still “survivals of the old Dionysian cult” in these practices, but he argued that such were preserved to a greater extent in the “much more substantial Greek custom” and only partially in the “Bulgarian custom”.

Katsarov’s reference to foreign studies was not accidental and in the future such references would have a particular impact on the development of the subject-matter in Bulgarian science. Katsarov (1907: 454) himself explicitly noted that the article by Dawkins which he was citing was not available in Bulgarian libraries at the time – he had found it in the German Archaeological Institute in Rome.^[11] However, the circulation of texts and ideas soon increased. Like the ethnography of the nestinarstvo (Anastenaria) (Marinov, 2016: 158–160; Lazova, 2017), the elucidation of the nature and origins of the kukeri was framed by the entangled histories of the Balkans. The emphasis on those two customs and the discovery of their Dionysian substratum date back to the second half of the 19th century and stemmed from the attempts of Greek folklorists and ethnographers to prove the historical continuity between ancient and modern Greeks (Marinov, 2016: 112–127), which in turn was linked to the struggles for national independence (Thiesse, 2011: 82–89). This exercise took place in dialogue with the Western European academic community and, specifically in the case of masquerades, an important role was played by British scholars, some of whom were associated with the British School at Athens, founded in 1886.

Fig. 7. A kalogheros at Vize, Turkey. Source: Dawkins, 1906: 194.

In 1899/1900, the British scholar J. C. Lawson (1899/1900) published his first-hand account of the carnival on the Greek island of Scyros. Although he refrained from commenting on the origins of the carnival at the time, in his work on the links between modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion which was published ten years later, Lawson (1910: 228–229ff) discussed this type of disguise as an inheritance from ancient Greek festivals, and especially from the worship of Dionysus. Meanwhile, Lawson’s first publication also attracted the attention of R. C. Dawkins, who in turn visited Scyros and published an account of the local carnival (Dawkins, 1904/1905: 72–74). A year later, the aforementioned article by Dawkins (1906) on the kalogheroi in the village of Haghios Gheorghios (now Evrenli) near Vize (Fig. 7) appeared in The Journal of Hellenic Studies, and went on to have a major impact on further discussion of the topic. Its main thesis – that traces of the cult of Dionysus had survived in the modern carnival in Thrace – is based on similarities between certain ancient practices and specific fragments of the living custom (for example, the presence of a baby and the performance of a mock marriage, the killing and resurrection of one of the kalogheroi, the disguise, the ritual ploughing and sowing) (Dawkins, 1906: 203–205).

Dawkins’s article gained significant attention and provoked new studies. However, its popularity and constant reference to the carnival at Vize are also indicative of the scholarly exchange in the early 20th century. Very soon A. J. B. Wace (1909/1910), another British archaeologist, also recorded masquerade practices in Thessaly and South Macedonia. He claimed that they were similar to those at Vize and suggested that they, too, were survivals of Dionysus worship (ibid.: 251), although there were differences in the time of year they were celebrated, and in the ritual characters and actions (Fig. 8). Later, Wace (1912/1913: 262–265) provided brief accounts of other masquerade practices among several ethnic groups in North Greece (Fig. 9) and concluded that the festival could not be considered typically Greek.

Again drawing on Dawkins (1906), the British archaeologist and classical scholar William Ridgeway (1910: 16–20ff) identified the Vize kalogheroi as undoubtedly a survival of a Dionysian orgiastic rite performed by the Thracians to ensure fertility. Soon after, James George Frazer (1912a: 25–34), in the expanded third edition of The Golden Bough, also drew similarities between ancient beliefs and celebrations in honour of the Thracian Dionysus and the modern masquerade, but associated the latter primarily with the Athenian Anthesteria. He presumed that the cult of the Greek gods had not completely died out: it was possible that the character of the Old Woman (Babo) was the rustic prototype of Demeter, while the couple disguised as a man and a woman could represent Pluto and Persephone (Frazer, 1912b: 334–335). Those conclusions about masquerades on Bulgarian and Greek territory were again based on Dawkins’s account, which had by then been supplemented by information from Katsarov.

Fig. 8. Masqueraders at Pelion, Greece. Source: Wace, 1909/1910: 244.

Fig. 9. Masqueraders at Verria, Greece. Source: Wace, 1912/1913: 261.

These are just a few of the scholarly uses of the carnival at Vize that were made possible through the mediation of the British archaeologist. In practice, Dawkins’s ethnographic evidence was employed in the search for ancient traces and was often used to justify divergent theories (Puchner, 2009). Later, this trend of cross-cultural comparisons led some scholars to seek even the roots of modern British mummers in ancient Greek masquerades (Morgan, 1989; cf. Fees, 1989).

Against this background, and especially considering the influence of Frazer’s work on European agrarian festivities (Testa, 2017), it is not surprising that in Bulgaria the discussion about kukeri revolved around the question of their genesis (Kraev, 1996: 6) and mobilized a “survivalist” paradigm. Nonetheless, it is essential that this discussion often had political implications and involved efforts to clarify the origins of the Bulgarians in general. As Shishmanov (1889: 27, emphasis in original) warned, “[f]olklore studies also have an important political significance for us. They are almost the only means of defining the ethnographic boundaries of the various Balkan peoples”. Mikhail Arnaudov (2004b), whose study Kukeri and rusalii (in Bulgarian) appeared in 1920 and continued the discussion of origins, was well aware of this fact. In it, he systematized the evidence on kukeri that was available until then, adding his own field observations. He arranged the descriptions “in a certain geographical sequence so that we can have a clear picture of the custom in the different parts of Bulgaria” (Arnaudov, 1972: 9). The folklorist, however, applied an isometric method that made him take into consideration “where a poetic legend or a custom is most integrated into everyday life and is indigenous, and where they are something that has been transferred, borrowed or transformed significantly” (ibid.: 10). In this regard, he stressed that one should carefully examine “what is the [geographical] scope of a fact, since it is inappropriate to speak generically of a Bulgarian song, a Bulgarian belief, a Bulgarian rite, if they are not something known everywhere” (ibid.). And one more thing:

Finally, it must be borne in mind that if some things are not in the least nationwide, they are often international as well, since they belong to a cultural-historical circle that has affected, to a different extent, several tribal communities. (Ibid.)

Assuming that customs are “capable of moving vigorously across many national boundaries”, Arnaudov identified the “original sources” of mumming in Greece (ibid.). He concluded that there was a common basis and interdependence between “Bulgarian and Greek mumming plays”, the custom being older among the Greeks, the custodians of the “old cult of Dionysus” (ibid.: 80–105). Without insisting on a complete coincidence between old and new rites, he also drew comparisons between the masking practices of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and the practices attributed to the cult of Dionysus in antiquity. Ultimately, he arrived at the conclusion that the custom had a “common ancient Greek basis”: the Dionysia were transmitted to the Bulgarians via the Greeks in Thrace, and almost certainly not the other way round (ibid.: 81, 102). According to the folklorist, the probable prototype of this “folk carnival based on the ancient Dionysia” was the Anthesteria in Attica. He also included in his study information about masking practices among some of the neighbouring Balkan peoples – precisely on account of “the centuries of interaction on the broadest cultural basis among Bulgarians, Greeks, Serbs, Romanians, and Albanians” (ibid.: 10) – but ultimately found borrowings solely from ancient Greece.

Thus Bulgarian culture – and this was the culture of the otherwise young nation-state – was positioned in the space influenced by the classical heritage. As Georg Kraev (1996: 9) has noted, these interpretations by Arnaudov reflected his fundamentally high opinion of the importance of the “cultural Greco-Roman world”. They, in turn, were influenced by the ideas of Frazer, Dawkins, Ridgeway, etc., thus establishing a connection with European civilization (Bakalova, 2009: 4, 9–10) – both through the living heritage and through the inscription of Bulgarian scholarship into theoretical and methodological paradigms that were relevant at the time.^[12]

Arnaudov’s study, which to this day remains one of the most influential publications on the subject, contributed to the formation of the image of the masquerade in another way as well. In his topographical description of the custom, Arnaudov distinguished between “two main types”: kukeri on Sirnitsa (the last Sunday before Lent), found mainly in Southeastern Thrace, and the babugeri in Macedonia, characteristic of the days from Christmas to Ivanovden (Eastern Orthodox St John’s Day) (Arnaudov, 1972: 68–69; cf. Kraev, 1996: 8). This division proved to be extremely persistent and was periodically re-actualized. Another contribution of Arnaudov’s study was the establishment of the generic name kukeri, which replaced and to some extent unified all the variants of masquerade and their local names (startsi, survakari, dzhamalari, drakusi, dervishi, arapi, kamilari, chaushi, etc.). As Kraev (1996: 9) has pointed out, in the following decades only kukeri were spoken and written about.

Fig. 10. Masqueraders. [Place not identified, probably Central Bulgaria], ca. 1946–1952. Source: Archive of IEFSEM – BAS / British Library, EAP618/3/2/39.

Fig. 11. Masqueraders from the Elhovo region, Southeastern Bulgaria, ca. 1946–1952. Source: Archive of IEFSEM – BAS / British Library, EAP618/3/2/746.

The kukeri masquerade continued to fascinate scholars and gradually became emblematic for Bulgaria – these were “[o]ur people’s merriest customs of the year”, the fruit of an “extraordinary folk genius” (Vakarelski, 1943: 37). New field studies were conducted, some of which were published, and the festivals and associated props were documented photographically (Fig. 10 and 11), recording the richness of the Bulgarians’ spiritual and material culture. For a long time, however, there were no theoretical studies on Bulgarian mumming. From the late 1950s onwards, attempts were made to examine it as a theatrical spectacle or dramatic game, with some scholars proposing evolutionist interpretations (Raychevski, 1993: 15–18). The prominent Bulgarian ethnographer Hristo Vakarelski (1896–1979) held a similar view. He also did not fail to pay attention to carnival customs and defined them as manifestations of “genuine folk theatre” (Vakarelski, 1977: 511, 588). He again referred to “an archaic period” but questioned the influence of classical antiquity, whether Greek or Thracian. As for the parallels that authors such as Arnaudov made with ancient cults, Vakarelski recalled that such “analogies have already been established much more widely elsewhere and require more careful historical research” (ibid.: 598, 600–601). It is in the context of the comparative study of folklore and the expansion of the ethnographic range that Vakarelski sought the origins of the kukeri masquerade elsewhere, “outside of ancient influence” (ibid.: 600–601).

He sought them primarily in the Slavic world: in Vakarelski’s account, this was “an archaic tradition characteristic of all Slavs” (ibid.: 511). Less influential were the customs of Thracians, Greeks, and Illyrians, from whom, however, the Bulgarians “must have inherited something” (ibid.: 601). This view was also consistent with Vakarelski’s general concept about the development of the Bulgarian nationality and its culture, which was above all a “culture brought from the Slavic original homeland”. It may have been “enriched by way of migrations and in the new places of residence” (ibid.: 23), it may have united with that of the Proto-Bulgarians, it may have accepted some “influences from the customs of the ancient indigenous inhabitants, the Thracians” (ibid.: 511), but the Bulgarian nationality “remains Slavic in terms of language, lifestyle, and culture” (ibid.: 20).

Thus, at least in theory, the origins of the kukeri masquerade were synchronized with the Bulgarian nation’s Slavic genealogy, which was given priority in official discourse after 1944 (see Iliev, 1998: 8–9). Socialist ethnography and its turn towards historical sciences in the search for the ethnogenesis of the Bulgarian people (Iliev, 2008: 148–151; Luleva and Rakshieva, 2006: 13) invested the question of the connection of mumming to the national ancestors with a new intensity. The dynamics in the concept of the formation of the Bulgarian nationality were also reflected in studies of traditional culture. The 1960s saw the beginning of a renegotiation of the relationship between the so-called ethnic components and their contribution to modern Bulgarian culture in ethnographic and historical writings on kukeri. In this context, greater emphasis began to be placed on the ancient stratum and the original heritage of “the most ancient population in our lands – Daco-Moesians and Thracians, or [coming] from Romans and Greeks” (Petrov, 1963: 345). The objective of research was also clearly formulated: to contribute to “elucidating the ethnogenesis of our people, its lifestyle peculiarities, culture and spatial distribution of the pre-Slavic ethnic substratum” (ibid.: 345).

Meanwhile, the Soviet historian Tatyana Zlatkovskaya, whose research interests were in the field of paleo-Balkan and Thracian history, returned to the work of Arnaudov and Katsarov and questioned the ancient Greek origins of kukeri. She excluded some variants of masking from the concept of the kukeri custom and noted that the latter was not found throughout Greece, but only in its northern part; mostly there where the process of Hellenization wasn’t intense (Zlatkovskaya, 1967: 36–37ff). Hence, her conclusion was that the older Dionysian cult among the Thracians – attested precisely in Southern Thrace – was at the root of the kukeri as well as of the ancient Greek Anthesteria (ibid.: 37–46). This view, which later became popular among Bulgarian scholars, was likewise critical of the prioritization of the Greco-Roman heritage in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, focusing instead on the significance of the indigenous Balkan cultures as well as on the relationship with Slavic culture (Zlatkovskaya, 1978: 58). Whereas the origins of kukeri in the southeastern and northeastern parts of Bulgaria as well as in Sredna Gora mountain were traced back to the Thracians, masking in the southwestern and western parts of the country was attributed to the New Year customs of the Slavs (Zlatkovskaya, 1967: 31–32).^[13]

The idea that there were two different types of customs, which also referenced Arnaudov’s distinction mentioned earlier, was developed further and presented by the ethnographer Petar Petrov (1971; 1972). He reasserted the influence of the Thracian substratum, but at the same time managed to reconcile the autochthonous heritage with Slavic influence. After observing the masquerades in two villages – Padarevo in the region of Burgas and Yardzhilovtsi in the region of Pernik (Fig. 12 and 13) – he distinguished two “formations”, kukeri and survakari. This “systematic distinction” was based on the differences in origins, inherited content, and structure. Petrov defined kukeri as a Thracian substratum phenomenon related to land cultivation. On the other hand, he associated survakari with livestock breeding, seeking their roots in the Slavic original homeland (Petrov, 1972: 267, 270). And another thing: although originally Thracian, the kukeri custom was enriched in a specific way by the continuous ethnic contact with the Slavs after they arrived on the Balkan Peninsula (Petrov, 1971: 117–118; 1972: 276, 279). The founding ethnocultures were thus reconciled under the umbrella of “our national heritage”: the two formations were united in a “customary entity with Bulgarian characteristic features” (Petrov, 1971: 118; 1972: 267).

Fig. 12. Kukeri from the village of Padarevo, Southeastern Bulgaria, 2019. Photo: The author.

Fig. 13. Surova in the village of Yardzhilovtsi, Central Western Bulgaria, 2016. Photo: The author.

In addition to their unequivocal conclusions giving priority to Slavs and Thracians, Petrov’s publications are also notable for drawing clear national boundaries and responding to more essential tasks such as that of elucidating the ethnogenesis of the Bulgarians. As Kraev (1996: 10) has highlighted, the origins of the kukeri masquerade were no longer sought as an external influence; it was viewed as a phenomenon of “relictual endemism” and proof of “the depth of our culture” (Petrov, 1971: 118). Greek mediation in the transmission of the custom was also unambiguously rejected. Thus the Greeks, among whom similar practices were observed, were defined as a “Grecized Bulgarian population” (ibid.: 117).

This theory about a Slav-Thracian synthesis was also supported by the ethnographer Marina Cherkezova (1972; 1974), who interpreted the ritual masks and costumes as carriers of ethnocultural content. She confirmed that some zoomorphic masks were “proven to be Slavic in character” and were found throughout Bulgaria, while some of them also had “full equivalents” among all Slavic peoples. She also found proto-Slavic elements in the costumes of the mummers as well as in some ritual characters – for example, the bride and bridegroom, whom Zlatkovskaya and Petrov wrote about as well. All of these formal similarities, according to Cherkezova (1972: 191), attested to “the strength and vital persistence of Slavic culture, which prevailed and gave the indigenous Thracian substratum a Slavic form”. In other animal masks and fragments of costumes, mostly of kukeri in Southeastern Thrace, she identified traces of the ancient Thracian substratum (Cherkezova, 1972: 189–190; 1974: 54–55). These conclusions were based on observations during a thematic expedition for collecting kukeri and survakari costumes and props, which was conducted by the then Ethnographic Institute with Museum in 1967–1968.

The distinction between kukeri and survakari, along with their respective origins, was widely embraced by Bulgarian scholars. It was also an expression of the new concept of the Bulgarian national genealogy, in which late socialism added the Thracians – precisely with their beliefs and customs (Iliev, 1998: 9–14, 2019: 66–73; Marinov, 2016: 164–172). The year 1971 saw the publication of Dimitar Angelov’s influential monograph Formation of the Bulgarian nationality (in Bulgarian), which officialized the concept of the three-component composition of the Bulgarian ethnic community. The so-called Thracian ethnic substratum was introduced as the third component, which personified the cultural contribution of the oldest population in the lands that were later settled by Slavs and Proto-Bulgarians (Angelov, 1971). It was assumed that – despite the “assimilation” of the Thracians among the Slavic tribes and the formation of one Slavic culture – Thracian and Balkan traces could be sought in some festivals and rites, such as kukeri (ibid.: 187–188, 283–315; see also Primov, 1980: 185). In 1979, the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences published the first volume of a multi-volume History of Bulgaria (in Bulgarian). This volume, which was almost completely devoted to the Thracian tribes, marked “the direct connection” between Antiquity and the Middle Ages in the Bulgarian lands, manifested in both material and spiritual continuity (Fol and Velkov, 1979). The same volume included the caveat that mumming, along with nestinarstvo and tattooing, were found among all Indo-European peoples (Venedikov, Fol and Marazov, 1979: 246–247). Meanwhile, researching the connections between the ancient heritage and Bulgarian mediaeval culture in various spheres (language, folklore, religious practices, architecture, livelihood, dress, food, etc.) as well as proving the endurance of the Thracian heritage despite the process of Romanization, became two of the major tasks of the Institute of Thracology founded at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences in 1972 (see, e.g., Tapkova-Zaimova and Yordanov, 1981; Georgieva, 1970; Gocheva, 1982). The historical continuity and role of the Thracian substratum in the formation of the Bulgarian nationality were also confirmed in the two-volume Ethnography of Bulgaria (in Bulgarian) published in 1980, where the section on the ethnogenesis of the Bulgarian people included an article by one of the ideologues and most authoritative representatives of Bulgarian Thracology, Alexander Fol (1933–2006), on the “pre-Slavic population” and again stressed the contributions of Thracian spiritual culture (Fol, 1980).

A more critical view regarding the ethnographic tendency to look for survivals of Dionysus worship in kukeri was held by the Thracologist Georgi Mihailov (1915–1991). Although he assumed that there might be such reminiscences in folklore, he believed that this was “an ordinary carnival with its grotesqueness as a fertility ritual”, since the orgiastic nature of Dionysus had receded to the background in the late era (Mihailov, 1972: 7, 227). This sceptical view, however, remained rather an exception. For example, Evgeniy Teodorov’s monograph Ancient Thracian heritage in Bulgarian folklore (in Bulgarian) was published in the same year as Mihailov’s study. In it, Teodorov (1999 [1972]: 5), a folklorist, argued that the Bulgarians were “direct inheritors” of the Thracians because they had preserved elements of the latter’s spiritual culture, one of which was masquerade. He was yet another scholar who returned to Rakovski’s question about the god of the wild, and suggested that the latter was precisely Dionysus. Based on the carnival in the village of Sevar, Kubrat region, he drew a clear connection between the kukeri (sic) customs and the Thracian Dionysian cult.^[14] He even spoke of “Bulgarian Dionysian rites” which demonstrated “the low level of Greek influence” and which were refracted through “the Slavic mentality” (ibid.: 59–63).

It is noteworthy that Teodorov’s interpretations were not fully acknowledged by Bulgarian Thracologists (Popov, 1999: 387). On the other hand, however, it was precisely the institutionalization of Thracology as an autonomous scientific discipline in the early 1970s (see Marinov, 2016: 165–166ff.) that contributed to the identification of the Thracian substratum in kukeri as well as in other elements of traditional culture – such as, for example, nestinarstvo (Lazova, 2017). Already at the First International Congress of Thracology, held in Sofia in 1972, such concepts were presented by authoritative scholars – while Hristo Vakarelski (1974) focused on the Thracian traces in the Bulgarian people’s material culture, Ivanichka Georgieva (1974) spoke of the Thracian influences in the Bulgarian people’s spiritual culture, mentioning kukeri customs among others (ibid.: 216). This concept continued to be supported, with the papers at the second congress (in Bucharest in 1976) elaborating even further on the links between Thracian antiquity and Bulgarian folklore of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and referring also to kukeri (Georgieva, 1980: 274; Tcherkézova, 1980; Veleva, 1980: 391). The line of explanation taken by Romanian Thracologists was similar: the autochthonous substratum was noticed in masquerades in Romania, where a distinction was made between North Danubian and South Danubian Thracians (Vulcănescu, 1974). In this regard, an epistemological appeal was made for joint work of Thracian paleoethnologists in Southeastern Europe in order to surmount individual terminology and the lack of coordination of research in the different countries (Vulcănescu, 1980: 398). The problem was actually a more general one and had wholly affected the ambivalent international cooperation, in which the imperatives of nation-states and their scientific schools were often evident (Grandjean, 1984: 128).

Fig. 14. The white kuker in the village of Brashlyan, Southeastern Bulgaria, 1973. Source: Prof. Alexander Fol Museum of History in Malko Tarnovo / DOCUMENTARYBG.

The development of Thracology led to the elaboration of more comprehensive theories that examined the ancient heritage through the lens of Bulgarian traditional culture. Alexander Fol (1985: 3) noted that the latter was illiterate, as was Thracian culture: “Albeit asynchronic, similar cultural circles intersected, so long as their carriers were still historically active”. This also cleared the way for a more active use of folklore as a source for Thracology, which appealed for interdisciplinarity, and its treatment as a living antiquity. Of course, Fol stressed that folk culture was a dynamic system, and warned of the difficulties in studying cultural development and continuity. In this regard, he noted the imprecise nature of any mechanical identification and description of the Thracian heritage without taking into consideration the fact that Thracian culture was also a “synthetic phenomenon” (Fol, 1981: 213; see also Fol, 1986: 22). With this caveat, the Thracologist assumed that the survival of nestinari and kukeri customs in Strandzha region was proof of Thracian religious presence. In this context, he expressed the following view, which would subsequently be developed further and built on in a number of future studies: “The white Dionysian kuker, the kuker proper, is still alive, the only actor from the time of the birth of theatre from the folk art of Southeastern Europe” (Fol, 1981: 216). The idea that the so-called white kuker without a mask (Fig. 14) was a relic, along with other folk practices in Strandzha, also found expression in Fol’s (1986: 43–45) theory of Thracian Orphism as an aristocratic doctrine (cf. Marinov, 2016: 183–185ff). Despite the obsolete original ritual meaning, Fol (1986: 44–45) nevertheless assumed that it was possible to look for traces of “the pagan realia of the Thracian ethnocultural substratum”. Obviously, the very encounter with a living antiquity also inspired the formulation of this concept:

It is one thing to describe a Thracian Dionysian rite based on literature which you have ambitiously collected completely, and quite another to find out that you are attending a Dionysian performance, for example, in the village of Brashlyan at Malko Tarnovo when the Kukerovden custom is performed. Such encounters trigger an explosion of ideas about new problematics. (Fol, 1986: 7)

These conclusions were related to field studies conducted during years-long interdisciplinary expeditions whose results contributed to the recognition of the Strandzha region as one of the main loci of Thracian material and spiritual heritage (Lazova, 2020: 68–70). Ethnographic research, reframed in terms of the Orphic interpretation, provided a resource for the further analysis of Bulgarian mumming. This approach was taken by Valeria Fol (1988: 393), who also confirmed that “the custom is genetically related to the Dionysian circle of rites, but to the rites of the Thracian Dionysus”. Specifying that she was referring to “the rural ecstatic confession of the Thracian Orphic doctrine, i.e., the way of confession of the uninitiated in it”, she traced the chthonic and solar elements of the custom. Deep down in it, Valeria Fol (1984: 133–134) found a dogmatic-ideological message and codified knowledge, which she associated with the spiritual history of the Thracians and, more generally, with the “Thraco-Asian-Minor religious-ritual reality”.

The implicit continuity between Thracian rural culture and Bulgarian rural culture of the late 19th and early 20th centuries as custodians of ancient beliefs and practices (see Zhivkov, 1989: 20–23; Georgieva, 1970: 33) was also assumed by the archaeologist Ivan Venedikov (1916–1997). It was in such a context that he argued for the difference between the West European carnival and kukeri – a distinction zealously supported to this day by Bulgarian ethnographers and folklorists. According to Venedikov (1983: 145), kukeri games were

[t]he primordial form of the Thracian Dionysia … but in the form in which they were performed by the Thracians under the conditions of a purely rural way of life at the time when there were still no cities and urban life in Thrace. They were the product of Thracian rural culture and have survived as such to this day. They were spread outside of Thrace by the Greeks and mainly by the Romans, but under the conditions of a purely urban [way of] life.

Dealing with the question of how these festivals had found their way into mediaeval Bulgarian culture, Venedikov discussed also the origins of kukeri, drawing parallels with the Thracian Dionysia and arguing that the Greek sources had been revised through folklore:

Always being under the impression of Greek art and the representations of Dionysus and his thiasos, we cannot imagine the procession of Dionysus in any way other than the way it is depicted by the old monuments – a multitude of naked or half-naked figures. In contrast to them, we see on Kukovden overclothed people, so much so that even their heads are covered with masks. The Thracian processions held in honour of Dionysus were also conducted by clothed people, as one can see from an account of Ulpian that is repeated by almost all reasearchers: “Those who perform processions in honour of Dionysus have the custom of disguising themselves in order to resemble his companions, some as satyrs, others as Bacchantes, still others as Silenians.” Those are in fact our kukeri and they give us a much more clear idea of the spirit of the Thracian festival than the monuments of Greek art. (Ibid.: 136–137)

The thesis of the Thracian origins of kukeri was also supported by other authoritative scholars. The ethnographer Ivanichka Georgieva, who continued to deal with the problems of Thracian ethnology (e.g., Georgieva, 1984), in her seminal work Bulgarian folk mythology (in Bulgarian) once again stressed the vitality of the ancient tradition and the links to the Thracian Dionysus (Georgieva, 1993: 62, 239). The Thracologist Ivan Marazov (1992: 88, 217–218, 342; see also Raychevski, 1993: 39) also accepted similar views. The question was discussed most extensively in the monograph The kuker without a mask (in Bulgarian) by Stoyan Raychevski and Valeria Fol (1993). It conclusively established the concept of the territory of Strandzha and the Ruptsi inhabiting it as custodians of a specific rite which was “a cult practice of a mysterial nature”, a relic of “the most archaic manifestations of Euroasian orgiastic practice” worshiping the cult of Dionysus Zagreus (ibid.: 135). This book also established the official name of the rite, “The kuker without a mask” or “The white kuker”, which would later become an emblem of the local heritage.^[15]

This theory about the origins of the kukeri masquerade became one of the most popular and was not only accepted by a number of authors but also served as a general framework of the problem field in question.^[16] It should be noted that the Thracian origins of kukeri rites have been defended by some of the most influential Bulgarian scholars working in different periods and different disciplines, and using different methodologies. Of greatest importance, however, turned out to be the rise of Thracology which – not without significant support from the socialist state – managed to forge and introduce a substitute antiquity (after Klaniczay, Werner and Gecser, 2011). That is also why the redefinition of the Bulgarian national ethnogenesis by including the Thracians in it also had an impact on the concept of the kukeri masquerade, which at that time became an important part of Bulgarian cultural heritage:

To the resilience and to the extraordinary vitality of the Slavic element and to the fervent outburst of the Proto-Bulgarian strength was added also the Thracian intoxication with nature. This urge did not fade in the popular consciousness and, with its enchanting rhythm, drew in the kukeri – messengers of the Thracian Dionysus, with incredible masks, with props – forerunners of tragedy. (Popov, 1999: 230)

This trend is valid to this day, when the Thracian origins of kukeri rites are accepted rather as an unquestionable fact. However, it also contains a more novel aspect that has been present since the 1990s. More specifically, the Dionysian rites are examined on another, second level: if the first is the already discussed presence of ancient relics in kukeri, the second introduced the funerary masks found in archaeological excavations in Southeastern Europe (Fol, A., 1999). Once again within the paradigm of Thracian Orphism, the burial with such (gold) masks is viewed “not only as anthropodemonization of the deceased but also as a sign that precisely he had reached the perfection of being in the rite a Son of the Great Mother Goddess” (Fol, V., 1999: 13). Direct ethnic connections are not made here, even though the influence of oral Orphism, the relative Thracian origin of the finds, or the continuity in rites have been admitted in certain cases (e.g., Marazov, 2009; Fol, 2009a; 2009b; 2011; 2016). The discussion of these issues seems to be more meaningful at the scientific conferences held since 1969 as part of the masquerade festival in Pernik and established as a national forum on the problems of Bulgarian mumming (see Georgiev, 2016). In this sense, the interweaving of ancient funerary masks into the general picture of traditional masquerades has occurred seamlessly, thus not only indirectly reinforcing the continuity of the contemporary cultural practice but also to some extent nourishing the vitality of Thracology.

Unprestigious Heritages?

Against the background of the popular theory about the ancient Thracian origins, it is notable that little if any attention has been paid to the problem of disguising in the Middle Ages (cf. Iliev, 1900; Arnaudov, 1972: 90–91; Tapkova-Zaimova, 1960; Venedikov, 1983: 141–145); more generally, there are also no archaeological studies on the subject (Zidarov and Grębska-Kulow, 2013: 107). The relevant processes during the mediaeval period have not been researched in Bulgaria despite the opinion of some scholars that they were crucial for the formation of masquerade rites (Stamenova, 1982: 95; Benovska-Sabkova, 1994: 4, 11–12). If the subject is discussed at all, the emphasis is usually on ancient survivals and their persistence in later centuries (Venedikov, 1981: 21–22). At the same time, however, most of the publications emphasize the unity and common Bulgarian character of the invariant kukeri rites regardless of their local and regional variations. On the other hand, as Veneta Yankova (2014a: 6) rightly notes, “Bulgarian scholarship is still indebted to research into the masquerade traditions of non-Bulgarian ethnic communities in the Balkans (Turks, Tatars, Roma).” Although there are many publications on masquerades, there are very few that deal with the heritages of particular ethno-religious communities and the interactions between them.

If we return to the grandees of Bulgarian ethnography and folklore studies, some of whom explicitly introduced the question of different influences, this trend is also clearly noticeable. Mihail Arnaudov (1972: 35, 40, 61, 78, 113–114, 141, 208), for example, in his study on kukeri and rusalii, mentioned masquerade practices among Turks, Pomaks, Roma, as well as Bosniaks.^[17] While not completely dismissing the possibility of Turkish and Arabic borrowings in the ritual Dzhamal (Fig. 15 and 16), these mentions rather confirm the observation made here: “the participation of Turks ... best characterizes the degradation [of the ritual] to mere entertainment” (ibid.: 113). Or:

And the fact that they are practised among Muslims in exactly the same way as among Christians, identically in two environments that are not in any direct contact today, shows just how tenacious the classical tradition is – supported, of course, by an ancient indigenous faith. Even if we assume that the kamila [camel] as a ritual mask may have been borrowed by Bulgarians from Arabs and Turks – something highly likely – still the starting point of the custom here and there should be sought in the Dionysian cult or in its Byzantine later forms. (Ibid. 114)

In this sense, an active role was not assigned to the ethno-religious aspect outside the framework of the consensual Bulgarian (pagan or Orthodox Christian) ritual that preserved the ancient tradition; presumably, it had no agency of its own – nor could it have contributed to the development of masquerading. The latter understanding also corresponds directly to the persistent Orientalist discourse that defines the Ottoman conquest as a cause of cultural and civilizational backwardness and allows its legacy to be seen only as barbaric, backward and destructive (Neuburger, 2004: 23–26). However, if the foreign was too visibly present to be ignored, it could apparently be neutralized by mobilizing more ancient, that is, more prestigious, roots. Such a line of argumentation can be found also in Vakarelski. He acknowledged some Oriental and Turkish influences and defined them as “a reflection of the social and economic reality of the five centuries under Turkish rule” (Vakarelski, 1977: 598). Against these, however, the ethnographer contrasted terms and play-actions in which he found a “chronologically older basis” and “an even more primeval pre-class worldview”.

Fig. 15. Kamila (Camel) from the village of Gabrovnitsa, Montana region, 2015. Photo: The author.

Fig. 16. Deve Oyunu (Camel) in Sındırgı, Marmara region, Turkey, 2019. Source: Haberso.

In fact, those peripheral mentions were rather an exception, as even such mentions are missing in most of the extensive literature on the subject. This tendency was reinforced in socialist ethnography and folkloristics, whose priorities were strongly marked by the totalitarian regime. From this perspective, Ottoman influence was almost entirely reduced to the “grave damage” it had inflicted on the Bulgarian nationality (Dimitrov, 1980). The task of Bulgarian science in the 1970s was defined as tracing the process of “conscious and nationwide liberation from the influence of the Turkish way of life and culture, layered over the centuries” (Gandev, 1972: 696). The possible traces of the period of Ottoman rule were marginalized, as it was assumed that despite the “Mohammedization” (i.e., conversion to Islam) and the “religious and ethnic discrimination”, the Bulgarian people had retained its ethnic self-consciousness, ethnonym and consciousness of a “Bulgarian land” (Dimitrov, 1980). Here we must bear in mind both the contradictory policies towards religious and ethnic minorities, at certain points developing into assimilation campaigns against particular communities, and the policies in the field of culture and “patriotic education” in socialist Bulgaria.^[18] The mutual conditioning of those processes led to the instrumentalization of folklore in the complex processes of identification and differentiation between the Bulgarian nation and Muslim communities. Science was also harnessed to assist in “skillfully directing intra-ethnic and inter-ethnic relations towards the achievement of full national unity” (Hadzhinikolov, 1975: 22–23) – both in identifying foreign elements and in supplying “scientific proof” about the Bulgarianness of Muslims (Neuburger, 2004: 73–74). The discourse of unity homogenized national culture, while simultaneously ensuring the continuity of the already established “ethno-cultural synthesis between Thracians, Slavs, and Proto-Bulgarians”, about which one of the most prominent folklorists of the time of late socialism, Todor Iv. Zhivkov (1938–2001) (1989: 18–19; emphasis in original), wrote the following:

In other words, the ethno-cultural synthesis took place first of all at the everyday-folkloric level, i.e., in the family-kin structures and mechanisms of socio-cultural inheritance. This was a process of inheritance – emancipation of the ancestor-ethnicities for a new historical life through the inheritor-ethnicity. The cultural message of the ancestor-ethnicities became a cultural possession; it was the basis of those social programmes thanks to which the cultural activity necessary for ethnic integration was carried out.

The process under consideration was also a process of formation of Bulgarian folk culture.

This “cultural unity” was reinforced by the thesis of a clearly formed “ethnic self-consciousness”, built according to some authors already during the First Bulgarian Empire (Duychev, 1970: 18). Starting from such positions, there were also some more explicit attempts to marginalize or silence that which did not fit into the monoethnic paradigm of Bulgarian national heritage. On the one hand, in order to ensure the purity of folklore, Oriental influences were banned and minimized, with the prohibitions on playing the zurna (a double-reed conical-bore instrument) and on dancing kyuchek being emblematic examples here (Peycheva and Dimov, 2002: 213–214; Silverman, 2012: 128–130). On the other hand, folklore itself was seen as a guardian of Bulgarian identity, a safeguard of survival and a weapon against the Ottoman conquerors (Silverman, 1983: 55–56). Folklore was redefined as an expression of the Bulgarians’ optimism, patriotism, and revolutionary spirit “under the conditions of feudal oppression and foreign slavery that weighed for centuries upon our people” (Dinekov, 1980: 27).^[19] In certain cases, there was also a specific appropriation of fragments of the Turkish-Muslim heritage, which were integrated into the national canon by concealing their Ottoman origins, presenting them as a “Balkan” phenomenon (Detchev, 2010: 117) or replacing them with ancient relics.

When Evgeniy Teodorov (1972), for example, discussed the kukeri and their Thracian roots, he failed to note that his analysis was based on the carnival customs performed by the Alians from the village of Sevar, Kubrat region, on Hıdrellez. On the contrary, he examined them as a typical manifestation of Bulgarian rites on Gergyovden (St George’s Day). In this regard, it should be recalled that in the context of the mid-1980s socialist assimilation policies and practices towards the Turkish minority (also known under the euphemism “Revival Process”), the traditional culture of heterodox Muslims in the Deliorman region was researched alongside Thracian antiquity, which entailed ideological uses of ethnographic practice (see Kanev, 2014: 7). In the then successive forced renaming of the Pomaks, we observe a similar pattern: their ethnic Bulgarian origin was justified by means of archaeology and linguistics, but also through folkloristic and ethnographic studies. Thus, it was postulated that certain elements of the folklore of the “Islamized population” “betray a deep cultural and historical continuity, a connection with the Paleobalkan heritage, with the civilization of the ancient Thracians” (Hristov, 1989: 94; emphasis in original). Here again, emphasis was placed on the ancient and indigenous nature of Bulgarian mumming, which predated later Islamic influences:

First of all, these are the masquerade rites. The mere fact that masquerade rites exist among the Turkic-speaking Bulgarian population is not sufficient proof for such a thesis because masking is universal, i.e., it is a common phenomenon in the folklore of various peoples across the world. What is more important is specifically how this rite functions. Islam has had its influence on the relatively arbitrary positioning of the rite in time, i.e., the rite (performed in autumn) is not as strictly fixed in the calendar as, for example, the kukeri rite among the Slavic-speaking Christian population. However, all other features point to the ancient Indo-European roots of the rite. … All this is consistent with the evidence which gave [scholars] grounds some time ago to look for the Paleobalkan roots of the kukeri games (characteristic of the Slavic-speaking Christian population), especially of the version of this rite that is characteristic of the region of Thrace. (Ibid.: 95)

Fig. 17. Celebrating Hıdrellez in the village of Sevar, n.d. Source: Archive of Narodno Chitalishte “Otets Paisiy – 1928”.

It was not until 1994 that Lyubomir Mikov placed the Alian carnival in its own context, providing information about the villages of Bisertsi, Madrevo and Sevar, where he found extant rites (Fig. 17). In his account, the carnival, in which the participants are female, mostly young women, is related primarily to female socialization, while its militarized character may be inferred from a legend idealizing a female feat in wartime (Mikov, 1994). In fact, this is one of the few studies devoted to masking among Muslims in Bulgaria. Later, the subject was introduced by Veneta Yankova (2005b), who posed the question of “the specificity and peculiarity of local ethno-religious variants” and presented some of the customs preserved among the Turks (Sunnis and Alians) in Northeastern and Eastern Bulgaria. These are masking customs performed by young unmarried men and women as part of various calendar or family rites: Sayadzhalar, Dzhamalar, Beshikli, Dede Oyunu, Arap Oyunu, etc. (Yankova, 2005a; 2005b; 2007). Kalina Bakalova (2009: 103–105) has complemented this picture; for example, with a description from the village of Giovren, Devin region, where until recently the local Turks performed Dzhadalar on the last day of Kurban Bairam. It is noteworthy that carnival plays at weddings and circumcisions are also known among Pomaks and are still practised (ibid.: 106–113).^[20] In Yakoruda, for example, it has been recorded that musicians bring along a chaush who “goes together with the tapan [double-headed drum] players to every wedding, dances, clowns around, collects money, gifts, and distracts attention from the bride” (Sharanska, 1996: 95, 98).

These ethnographic notes bring us back to the problem of the origins of the masquerade, but now situate it on a different plane. Expanding the historical, geographical and socio-cultural context, Yankova (2005b) highlights the presence of “complex processes of interplay and of different genesis” of these practices in the Balkans and warns that “tracing them back solely to the ancient tradition deprives them of an adequate approach to reveal their essence”. Particularly with regard to Dzhamal-type masquerades, she assumes the possibility of “the existence of a common Eurasian pre-monotheistic cultural fund” (Yankova, 2007: 73; see also Varvunis, 2001). It should be mentioned here that Muslims in present-day Turkey, including Anatolia, have also preserved a variety of masquerade customs (And, 1979, 1980; Özhan, 1998, with references therein).^[21] Some of them also show certain similarities with the “Bulgarian” kukeri in terms of names, characters, group structure, actions, etc. (Fig. 18–20). As Bakalova (2009: 99) points out, some of them even include ritual ploughing and sowing, which is overlooked as a fact by researchers of Bulgarian mumming, who associate the latter with the Slavic, Thracian, and more generally, the “European” tradition. Hence, Bakalova questions this type of application of the comparative approach and notes its potential for imposing a specific political discourse.^[22]

Fig. 18. Celebrating Saya Gezdirme in the village of Karaburna, Central Turkey, 2020. Source: fibhaber.com.

Fig. 19 and 20. Celebrating Tekecik Oyunu in the village of Bardas, near Konya, Turkey, 2016, 2019. Source: Karamandan.com, Bardas Köyü / Facebook.

In fact, as early as 1985, the French historian Bernard Lory (2002: 153) hinted that the question of the relationship between certain carnival customs of the Bulgarians and Ottoman culture was worth examining. This is evidenced by the numerous Ottoman-Turkish, Arabic, and Persian names of the characters such as hadzhiya, bolyukbashiya, kadana, harachar, berberin, arapi, dervishi, dzhamalari, dzhamaldzhii, chaushi, etc. (Vakarelski, 1977: 596; Mikov, 2003; Yankova, 2005b, 2014b, 2015; Bakalova. 2009: 120–123). Some of those characters are represented through appropriate costumes, props and actions. Here, for example, is a telling excerpt from an archival account of Kukovden in Straldzha recorded in 1948:

The “molla” [mullah], also called hadzhi-baba, represents a Turkish boyar. He is dressed in tattered men’s clothes, his shoulders draped with a goatskin rug or large straw mat that trails behind him. On his head is a kauk [kavuk] – a red fez around which a white sash is wrapped like a turban. His face is blackened or covered with a rag like the faces of kukeri, with an ox-tail attached for a beard. An older man plays the “molla”. In his hands he carries a pipe – a hollow gourd with a long wooden handle, in which some lit rag or straw is smoking.^[23]

Along with this, the names of some masquerade customs such Dzhamal, Kyopek Bey, etc., also suggest Eastern origins (Mikov, 2003; Yankova, 2005b). It should be noted that – unlike the above-mentioned masquerades in Muslim communities – these characters and customs have been internalized as a full-fledged part of Bulgarian mumming and are performed (mostly) by Christian Bulgarians. Today the masquerade game Dzhamal from the village of Koshov  and Dervishovden (Dervish Day) in the village of Lesichovo, for example, are inscribed on the  Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of the Republic of Bulgaria. The recognition of such heritage as “own” and its nationalization have relied on a narrative that focuses on the current state of customs and their present-day ethnic Bulgarian performers, without going into the more complex post-Ottoman context and – unlike the explication of the ancient substratum – without seeking historical depth.

In fact, in many cases the aforementioned distinction between Christians and Muslims is provisional, as there are typologically similar traditional masquerade practices in the Balkans (Yankova, 2007). There is also evidence from the mid-19th century of mixed Bulgarian-Turkish Dzhamalar groups in the region of Karnobat (Slaveykov, 1979: 290–291), while Arnaudov (1972: 33) noted that in Northern Dobrudzha the Turks also enjoyed the kukeri. That there have been intensive contacts and mutual influences is also indicated by the use of Turkish in some local variants of masquerade – in the dialogues, blessings and songs of the kukeri (Yankova, 2014b).

The gradual inclusion of ethnographic descriptions of different ethno-religious variants of masquerade, alongside those thought to be traditionally Bulgarian, in scientific texts devoted to a given region (e.g., Gogova and Milcheva, 1999: 126, 128; Gerginova, 2009: 265; Keremidarska, 2014: 137–141; Bozhidarova, 2016) can be seen as a sign of a change in attitudes towards the Others. This process has intensified with the changes in the country since 1989, due in particular both to the liberalized academic sphere and international donor programmes that fund the study of minority cultures (Ditchev, 2001). Thus, in 1995 the National Ethnographic Museum organized an exhibition which presented for the first time the Roma and their (traditional) culture in Bulgaria. This undertaking met with resistance (Decheva, 2001), as it was at odds with the dominant ethnonational concept of the Bulgarian national heritage which ethnographic museums in the country have continued to maintain and represent in their exhibitions to this day (see also Marushiakova and Popov, 2012).

With the opening up of this discourse, there also appeared the topic of the Romani/Gypsy elements in the kukeri masquerade, which had otherwise been permanently absent in the scholarly literature. The year 1992 saw the publication of Common customs and rites of Bulgarians and Roma (in Bulgarian), which placed the issue in a completely different context. This short ethno-pedagogical handbook for teachers had as its main aim to draw attention to the previously neglected “ethnocultural contacts and mutual influence” (Yordanova et al., 1992: 6). Curiously, in the spirit of the integration projects of the 1990s, the publication reiterated the established theories of origins – the survakari were “returned” to the “Slavic original homeland”, while the kukeri were identified as a “Thracian substratum” (ibid.: 25–26, 32–33, 67).^[24] Despite this, it explicitly acknowledged the similarities in the customary-ritual systems of the ethnic groups and recalled that mumming – as well as other customs – are also practised by the Roma (ibid.: 67).

Fig. 21. Tapan players and zurna players in the group of the village of Izgrev, Blagoevgrad region, 2018. Photo: The author.

It is known that members of particular Romani subgroups join in as masked participants and take on the role of various characters in local kukeri troupes (Creed, 2011: 162–169, 177–190; Strahilov, 2014b: 231). In fact, such processes are found in many traditional festivals (Popov, 1992). This is due to the long coexistence and contacts with other communities, which have formed contemporary Romani culture as a “colourful mix of own traditions and foreign borrowings” (Nunev, 1998: 9). Alongside this, the Roma’s centuries-long occupation with music finds expression in the masquerade, too. There is evidence from the mid-20th century of cases in which the masqueraders were accompanied by an entire Romani orchestra (Martinov, 1958: 727). Present-day field studies confirm the frequent hiring of Roma to provide musical accompaniment for kukeri groups, both in local celebrations and festival appearances. Very popular are the zurna players and tapan players from Southwestern Bulgaria (Fig. 21), regarding whom Lozanka Peycheva and Ventsislav Dimov (2002: 124–125ff) have pointed out that masquerades are among their main performance contexts.^[25] Traditionally, zurna players are Muslim Roma but their repertoire is transregional and multiethnic. It can be said that today the groups of the babugeri, stanchinari and chaushi rely heavily on musical virtuosity, which is a specific characteristic feature of these formations.

The musical profession of the Roma includes the making of bells and clappers as a mandatory and extremely important element of the kukeri’s props. In the region of Ihtiman, there is a well-known Romani subgroup, the Zvanchari (Bell-makers), in which individual families have continued to practice this craft (Marushiakova and Popov, 1993: 137), but there are also master bell-makers in other parts of the country – Gotse Delchev (Paskova, 2006: 115; Buchanan, 2017), Sliven region, etc. These master bell-makers are well known among the kukeri, but despite the demand, in some cases they turn out to be the continuers of a vanishing tradition. In the region of Gabrovo, since the 1950s, bell-making has been defined as a “Gypsy craft” due to the loss of its prestige (Boncheva, 1999). The socioeconomic crises after 1989 had a particularly negative impact on the Roma, with a return to traditional crafts sometimes becoming a strategy for coping with the uncertainty of the volatile present (Tomova, 1995: 85ff; Marushiakova and Popov, 2000: 11). For example, this is the case with some of the Zhelezari (Smiths), as evidenced by the following account of a man from this community in Samokov:

I’ve been in state employment before, I worked around 1984–85, there was a workshop here, I worked there for 15–16 years. Since democracy came along, I’ve been doing only this work, making fences and stuff... We are Zhelezari! [Makers of] bells, axes – this is our whole generation, our family, this is what we are – craftsmen. People have done something for their children without [holding] a state job. (Man, around 50, Samokov, September 2014)

We should also note the tendency of Roma in certain settlements to form their own kukeri troupes (Gerginova, 2009: 265; Creed, 2011: 166). There is sporadic evidence of traditional masquerades among various Romani groups, associated with popular festivals such as Vasilitsa (Bango Vasil) and Sirni Zagovezni (Cheesefare Sunday) (Marushiakova and Popov, 1993: 169; Decheva, 2006: 40–42, 57–58). In most cases, these formations fit into local and regional variants of masquerade, which are often enriched and internalized as their own. Mirella Decheva (2004) has drawn attention to the careful preparation of ritual props, which disproves the popular thesis that masquerading among the Roma is an adaptation that is only about entertainment and collecting gifts (see, e.g., Videnov, 1994: 53). In some cases, festivals are seen as a way of integrating into Bulgarian society or into the respective local community by reproducing established generally accepted images from national or local heritage, where ethnic specificities are consciously suppressed. In other cases, the same festivals may function as a manifestation of cultural emancipation and a platform for claiming one’s own Romani identity (see also Kovacheva, 2015: 267–268).

According to a study by Peycheva and Dimov (2002: 156–157), the Roma from the Nov Pat neighourhood in Razlog formed their own mumming group in 1968 on the initiative of a local zurna player. The musician organized the masquerade with the aim of “having a Gypsy-only [group], letting the neighbourhood have its own chaushi, babugeri”. Before that, the Roma had been joining the “Bulgarian” groups from other neighbourhoods as musicians and masked participants. The masquerade in the Roma neighbourhood of Kyustendil also emerged in its current form about 30 years ago (Kovacheva, 2015: 239–240). Local people recall that before that, on Vasilitsa, children used to go out and perform the Surva custom, while “kukeri from other towns (Petrich, Blagoevgrad, Sandanski, etc.) used to come to the neighbourhood, going from house to house to chase away evil spirits” (Pashova, 2002: 62). Importantly, however, these visiting kukeri were also Roma (Kovacheva, 2015: 239). Again with regard to the performative construction and enactment of an acceptable image for the community, we should mention the survakari group of the Erlii (local, settled) in the town of Radomir, whose dynamic development over the last ten years reveals complex and continuous processes of negotiating local and national belonging (Strahilov, forthcoming). In general, however, the mechanisms through which the culture of the majority is domesticated and reworked to become an expression of one’s own identity remain underanalysed (cf. Popov, 1996: 185).

Fig. 22. Celebrating the Bibiya in the town of Vidin, Northwestern Bulgaria, n.d. Source: Vidin-online.com / Sashka Bizeranova.

The most widely commented masquerade practice performed by Roma in Bulgaria is the Chasing Away of the Plague or Bibiyaki in the Nov Pat neighbourhood in Vidin (Fig. 22). It is celebrated on Atanasovden (St Athanasius’ Day) according to the Old Style (i.e. Julian) calendar and was recorded as early as the end of the 19th century (Bizeranova, 2005: 177), and later also by Arnaudov (1972: 208), who, however, did not include it in his general review of Bulgarian mumming. The pronounced interest in it (Popov, 1992: 66–68, 1996; Bizeranova, 2005, 2009, 2015; Decheva, 2006: 57–58) may be explained by the fact that this tradition is still alive and has no direct analogies in other communities in the Balkans. Some interpretations point to a hypothetical basis in Balkan-wide beliefs and assume the possibility of an earlier transmission of the custom from non-Roma to Roma (Popov, 1992: 66–68; 1996: 187–188, 198), but it is more likely the result of complex processes that led to a specific combination of ritual elements which is not found elsewhere (Marushiakova and Popov, 2016: 50).

However, the question of influences in the “opposite” direction, from Roma to non-Roma, remains neglected. To the crafts already mentioned, we should also add some important evidence from fieldwork accounts, although it is not particularly coherent. It has been recorded, for example, that in the mid-20th century in the village of Stanyovtsi, Breznik region, the figure of the mechkar (bear trainer) on Surva sang a song “sung by Old Gypsies in pubs”, which the local youths learned.^[26] According to an ethnographic record from 1976, the Survashkare (Mechkare) custom in the village of Yardzhilovtsi, Pernik region, was brought from the village of Dolna Sekirna, Breznik region, and before that “there was a custom called ‘Mechkare’ with gaidi [bagpipes], etc. The Gypsies used to have a feast on this day. When the local people started performing Survashkare, they dressed up as Gypsies.”^[27] An account from another village in the region of Breznik, Krasava, quotes an informant born in 1903 who said the following about the survakari masquerade: “The Gypsies used to come, we used to prepare [gifts] for the Gypsies. They are called Gypsies, not Kukeri – that’s [how they have been called] by habit since the old times.”^[28] This local name, to my knowledge, has not been published and commented on in scholarship, nor is it currently used by the practitioners of the tradition.^[29] However, the same name has been recorded in Serbia in the Belgrade area (Marjanović, 2008: 114).

Fig. 23. A Gypsy man from the survakari group of the village of Divlya in the region of Radomir (now in the region of Zemen), 1957. Source: Archive of IEFSEM – BAS / British Library, EAP103/1/1/25/22.

Fig. 24. Masqueraders disguised as Gypsy women from the region of Radomir, 2017. Photo: The author.

Representations of Roma by non-Roma are another intersection that offers an insight into intercultural interactions (Popov, 1992: 59–62; Creed, 2011: 169–173; Strahilov, 2014b). The so-called Gypsy characters (Fig. 2, 23 and 24) are almost always present in various versions of masquerade in Bulgaria as well as often elsewhere in Europe (Mallé, 2014: 197). In the literature, however, these characters are usually only mentioned when listing specific ritual figures, as is also the case with other ethnically foreign ones (Arabs, Turks, etc.). Because of their blackened faces, clothing with distinct asymmetry (old, torn and dirty clothes) and ritual actions, Gypsies are often analysed as a parody of the high character (Kraev, 1979: 160–165, 1996: 85ff), a personification of the ugly and scary (Videnov, 1994: 46), or semantically equivalent to the foreign in general, the representatives of the underworld and chaos (Popov, 1992: 61–62, 1996: 185).^[30] According to other authors, Gypsies do not personify such archaic prototypes, but rather attest to the presence of the Romani ethnicity in the community that practises the rite (Fol, 1997: 95); although grotesque, they retain their human appearance and represent “the humanized world and familiar social organization” in contrast to the monstrous masks (Yaneva, 1998: 300). In fact, the problem merits a separate study that would examine it in its present-day context, as these characters reflect not just archaic layers but also contemporary perceptions of and attitudes towards the Roma. An eloquent example in this regard is the inclusion of the carnival figure of the ethnic Bulgarian woman in the Roma survakari group from Radomir, which was arguably constituted as a reaction against the external Othering, racist stereotyping and exoticization of the Roma, which find expression in the Gypsy characters and draw legitimacy from references to tradition (Strahilov, forthcoming).

Heritage and Socialist Festivity

As we have seen so far, certain scientific inquiries and perspectives cannot always be disentangled from the sociopolitical environment in which they emerged. At some point they acquired an applied character through the alliances between science and (totalitarian) power. These entanglements are particularly evident in the organization of the Pernik masquerade festival, the first edition of which was held in 1966.^[31] The significance of this still extant event is multifaceted, including in terms of the revitalization of traditional practices, but for the purposes of this paper I will focus only on those elements of its history that have contributed to the reworking of Bulgarian mumming and its affirmation as national heritage.

The festival emerged in the context of the socialist state’s newly intensified interest in the past (Bokova, 2010), which rehabilitated and built upon certain nationalist postulates. This also predetermined the ideological use of cultural heritage: “millennia-old Bulgarian culture” was the first inexhaustible source of socialist culture, Todor Zhivkov (1979: 3; see also Elenkov, 2008: 206–214), First Secretary of the Bulgarian Communist Party’s Central Committee, said at the closing of the First Congress of Bulgarian Culture in 1967. The recognition of Bulgarian “spiritual culture” led to the rehabilitation of the kukeri masquerade, which after 1944 had been stigmatized as a religious “anachronism” (Bokova, 2010; Manova, 2012: 11), and its inclusion in the numerous folklore events that were being created at that time. This reconsideration was again due to the ancient origins: as Irena Bokova (2010) has pointed out, the masquerade was “saved” precisely thanks to its ancient roots. Thus, the survakari from Pernik took part in the opening of the Second National Festival of Amateur Art Activities in Sofia in 1964 (more than 300 mummers), as well as in the closing of the First National Festival of Folklore in Koprivshtitsa in 1965 (about 300 mummers). In connection with the latter, “a representative group of survakari, cleared of superfluous and unstylish ballast and presented only with ancient faces and masks”, was formed (Nikolov, 1965).

The role of those events in the purification of folklore is unequivocal. Telling in this regard is a case in which festival participants – along with the “Bulgarian” songs and dances – “allowed” themselves to perform the kyuchek onstage. This attempt was categorically sanctioned, as “the kyuchek is the most typical Turkish dance ... adapted to serve the bey [society], harem society, a feudal ruling class that is alien to our working people and mores”, and therefore has no place at a “BULGARIAN [sic] national gathering”, wrote the choreographer and member of the panel of judges at the Second Festival in Koprivshtitsa, Yordan Nikolov.^[32] In line with the official ideological policy supporting the idea of a monoethnic nation, he advised against “displaying … Bulgarian dances with foreign names and with a foreign dancing style”.^[33] In fact, considering that the hierarchical system of those festivals did not allow for the representation of minority cultures (identified in certain songs, dances, rituals, musical instruments, costumes, etc.), the discourse of purity turned out to be multilayered and of broader significance. Disguised also as traditionalism and authenticity, this folkloric purity was intertwined with the idea of the purity of the nation (see also Silverman, 1983) and at the same time emphasized the ancient heritage to neutralize Ottoman influences (Buchanan, 2006: 284ff).

This is the context that framed the newly created festival in Pernik. The latter was completely consistent with the concept of representing customs in an aestheticized form that would ensure that they “instil a love for folklore and foster patriotic feelings”.^[34] The reconfiguration of the masquerade was meant to purge it of all “vulgarities” and “Gypsyisms” (Nikolov, 1971a), as well as of religious elements that were inconsistent with the socialist culture. The creation of the festival was initiated by the already quoted Yordan (Dancho) Nikolov, at that time an inspector in the Department of Culture and Art at the Pernik District People’s Council, who was afraid that the custom would be “irretrievably” lost in the region. However, his words are also telling of the overall attitude towards heritage: “We will take this wonderful folklore from the people and, having freed it from that which vulgarizes it, return it to the people as an even brighter folk festival” (ibid.).

The reframing of heritage in national terms was maintained as a guideline in the preparation of the next editions of the festival. The Regulations for the Second National Festival of Kukeri and Survakari and the Spring Games and Dances Related to These Ancient Folk Customs (1967) set the following objective: “to find and revive forgotten ancient folk customs, which, after being aestheticized, are to be displayed and to instil a love for folklore and foster patriotic feelings”.^[35]  There is a peculiar paradox here: the represented customs ought to be both “true to the local tradition” and “aestheticized”. Moreover, the festival “should direct Bulgarian choreographers towards creating small theatricalized miniatures related to the customs”, which should accordingly “give meaning and content to the custom instead of mere display of masks and [indulging in] spectacle”.^[36] In the terms and conditions for participation, we read again that “the masks should be ancient, original and should reflect the local way of life”. At the same time, “ill-dressed, unstylish and sloppily designed masks and costumes” were not allowed.^[37] According to Bokova (2010), this aesthetic approach also led to certain revisions:

[M]asquerade games [were] perceived as ancient on the ideological level, but also as the predominance of the corporeal over the spiritual in the realm of the aesthetic. ... Hence this ambivalent attitude towards games with masks – they were regarded as ancient, but in their antiquity they remained “uncultured” and therefore could not reach the level of folk arts. This play of signs – positive when we speak of the roots of the culture [in question] and negative when we speak of aesthetics – allowed the games to be performed in public, but with certain restrictions.

This position of the organizers is very well illustrated in the understanding of the mask “not as something primitive, but as something professional that has come from the past.”^[38] The groups had to be “of high artistic merit”^[39] because their performance before thousands of spectators had both an emotional impact and undoubted ideological functions. To increase the ideological and educational effect of the festival, as well as to attract children, it was necessary to intensify efforts to pre-select and control what was presented onstage. In addition to the invitations sent to masquerade groups, the set rules were also propagated in the local press: “it is very important that the groups from our [Pernik] district should be on a high ideological and artistic level, true to the local tradition, ancient” (Yaprakov, 1967). The leaders of the groups were urged to “inspect the groups, to make high aesthetic demands on each participant”. In order to achieve the goals set, a choreographer was assigned to each group to “fine-tune the style and presentation” (ibid.). Before being allowed to perform in the official parade, the groups were subject to a “preliminary review” by a “special commission”.^[40]

Along with the aestheticization of the performances and the physical appearance, the organizers also put efforts into reformulating the symbolic content of kukeri rites. This involved emphasizing their pagan nature (as a counterpoint to their links with Christianity and the church calendar) and inscribing them into the new socialist festive-ritual system (see Koleva, 2021). Here the imperative was followed “[t]o make sense of and enrich the folk traditions, to diversify the cultural leisure activities of the working people” in order to turn the masquerade into “a new bright celebration of the creative buoyant spirit of the Bulgarians” (Yaprakov, 1967).

These processes were also relevant to the question of origins. This paper has already shown how the various theories were gradually asserted in Bulgarian science, ultimately falling in line with the official concept of the Bulgarian nation’s ethnogenesis. The participation of folklorists, ethnographers, choreographers, representatives of the Committee for Culture and the Centre for Amateur Art Activities in the festival’s organizing committee and panel of judges, as well as the holding of scientific conferences, opened up a wide field of discussion on this topic. The kukeri’s ancient roots were commented on; in the late 1970s, the Thracian connection clearly became predominant, so the then director of the Ethnographic Institute, Veselin Hadzhinikolov, had to warn his colleagues that “[t]he constant emphasis on the Thracian origins of phenomena should not lead to an underestimation of Slavic antiquity” (Benovska, 1977: 66). The thesis of the “ethnic function” of the masquerade and its “ethno-affirming, ethno-integrating and ethno-differentiating purpose” was introduced (Makaveeva, 1977: 150), and the reproduction of the customs was conceptualized as a “translation of the Bulgarian ethnic specificity” (Stamenova, 1980: 150). Thus, within the festival, the content of the custom was also affirmed as a combination of the cultures of the three ethno-forming components. The brochure for the festival’s fifth edition (1974) summarized the whole concept about the ancestors: “those who laid the foundations of the Bulgarian nationality – Slavs, Thracians, and Proto-Bulgarians”. The mummers became their exponents in the national culture – the survakari were associated with the “Slavic rites”, while the kukeri were associated with the agricultural new year, usually recognized as a Thracian heritage.^[41] This formula was also published in the press: “[t]he games of the kukeri/survakari ... originated in the primordial antiquity of the Thracians, whose spiritual heirs became the Slavs and Proto-Bulgarians” (Zhivkov, 1971).

The requirements of the organizers and methodological work on-site also contributed to the introduction of new elements into living practices, which, however, remained within the framework of the heritage canon.^[42] Thus, in 1985, experts advised “restoring the artistic element of the tradition”, which led to the appearance of theatrical scenes such as “The Cherry Cannon”, “The Spring of the White-Legged Maiden”, “The Abduction of the Bride by the Turks”, etc.^[43] It should be mentioned here that the positioning of kukeri in opposition to all things Ottoman and their association with the national liberation movement was also promoted by popular culture. The nationalist discourse propagated by the film productions of state socialism (Georgieva, 2017), many of which featured masquerade groups (Strahilov, 2019: 117–118; Fig. 25 and 26), undoubtedly played a role in this process. Dancho Nikolov (1967), on the other hand, wrote that during the period of Ottoman rule, the funds collected by the kukeri bands were used to purchase food, weapons and equipment for the haiduk bands. The search for continuity with the cultures of the ancestors and their opposition to the “Oriental accretions” gave birth to interpretations according to which “the Thracian and proto-Slavic tradition” was preserved because “[f]or centuries, the population ... defended the Bulgarian identity, did not succumb to any assimilation” (Krumov, Stoyanov and Mechev, 1971: 8). They also read in the same vein the invented scenes featuring the cherry cannon (used in the April 1876 Uprising against Ottoman rule) in the performances of kukeri from towns and villages at the foot of the Balkan mountains: “they act out a scene that takes us back to the years of Turkish yoke. The enemies of the people are defeated, the real kukeri procession begins, symbolizing peaceful life, fertility, attachment to the land and peaceful agricultural labour” (ibid.).

Fig. 25. Maria, disguised as a kuker, takes revenge on the Turks: a still from the film The Goat Horn, directed by Metodi Andonov, 1972.

Fig. 26. The rebel disguised as a kuker: a still from the film Liberty or Death, directed by Nikola Korabov, 1969.

In fact, those innovations also sparked debate among scholars and organizers. The festival’s opening ceremony included cannon fire, but some experts remained reserved. The prominent folklorist Rayna Katsarova (1901–1984) (1971: 11), for example, was sceptical of these “late overlays” on the masquerade, such as were the scenes representing “Borimechkata and the Cherry Cannon” (Fig. 27), “The Hanging of Vasil Levski” and “The Descent of Botev’s Band of Rebels”. The discussion also found its way into the press, where support for the appearance of the cherry cannon was expressed: “If the pagan Bulgarians had to fight only the forces of nature, what’s wrong with us parading our hatred of any kind of violence” (Krumov, Stoyanov and Mechev, 1971: 8). In general, however, this period was marked by disagreements between choreographers, cultural administrators, ethnographers, and folklorists, who had difficulty reaching consensus on the “authenticity” of folklore, its innovations, and its stage presentations by professional and amateur performers (see Nikolov, 1971b). In almost all cases, the declared goal was “to establish the source of the tradition, its authenticity and purity, so that it can be preserved for the Bulgarian people without perversion and vulgarization” (Makaveeva, 1977: 152). It was stressed that the custom “must be kept pure”, not perverted and distanced from its original form (Manova, 1974), but the limits of what was acceptable were variable and were often redrawn according to the ideological tasks at hand.

Fig. 27. Borimechkata with the cherry cannon, 1969/1974. Source: Central State Archives, f. 720, op. 5, a. e. 77-I-1.

Against this background, a relative consensus emerged around the need to control and remove certain elements of the masquerade that were perceived as foreign: “the games are conducted in a completely folk style, having been purged of all overlays, whether religious or decadent, classified under one term: ‘Gypsyisms’ [tsiganii]” (Nikolov, 1971a). If we take as an example the leaders of the groups in the region of Pernik, the Turkish loan word bolyukbashii (bölükbaşı), by which they were called, turned out to be problematic, while the changes in costume, resembling a red rebel uniform, were permissible “because the era is red”.^[44] Dancho Nikolov was also among the advocates of the thesis that Gypsies were “Oriental accretions” that were uncharacteristic of the custom. He admitted that they “colour the processions in [some] places, they are spectacular, but they are unaesthetic stains that blur the pure, scientific, informative folklore festival which brings folklorists from all over the world to Pernik”. Therefore, in his view, it was necessary to “purge ourselves of all Oriental borrowings and accretions”.^[45] Developing this view, Nikolov (1971a) wrote further:

 

The essence of the custom is highly ethical, and begging, which humiliates human dignity, is a borrowing tacked on to it in an ugly way. Aware of this, even at the very first festivals we advised our amateur performers to avoid these overlays and to display only what adorns our people and does not show it in a humiliated form.

 

The choreographer, who was also a methodologist at the District Centre for Amateur Art Activities, during one of the meetings with the leaders of the survakari groups in 1979, explicitly recommended “avoiding the preposterous, the insertion of Gypsyisms”.^[46] This was consistent with the ideological line at that time. In her instructions to researchers, the then Director General of the Centre for Amateur Art Activities, Anna Trichkova, expressed her indignation at “the kitsch that is allowed in the masks, in some characters – the Gypsies, for example. This is not a parody. Care should be taken with regard to the characters that have an ideological purpose, and all kitsch should definitely be removed,” she insisted.^[47] In the magazine Hudozhestvena samodeynost (Amateur art activities), where essays about the masquerade were regularly published, Gypsies were classified in the category of “ugly masks” that “have no place in this highly original procession” (Georgieva, 1967: 4).

The absence of “unaesthetic” Gypsies was seen as a positive revision of tradition and was encouraged. In the 1970s, the kukeri group from Pavel Banya did not receive a gold medal because “they took a step backwards – inserting a Gypsy duet amidst their pure folklore”.^[48] In response to a 1971 letter in which the kukeri from the village of Turiya in the region of Stara Zagora, “the workers of the rose and lavender gardens”, complained about their ranking at the recent festival, the Pernik District Council for Art and Culture wrote to them: “You appeared [at the festival] very well prepared, having purged the custom of the many ‘Gypsyisms’^[49] that they allow when the games are held in Turiya, including the jumping into the river when you wash away all that filth that is unaesthetically layered on your faces.”^[50] In the 1980s, regional reviews were also held to select kukeri groups that would be eligible to participate in the national festival. It was at these preliminary selections that the panel of judges eliminated groups in which Gypsies predominated: “Groups [in which Gypsies] predominated over the zvanchari [bell-ringers], the wedding group, if they prevailed, such groups were eliminated” (interview with M. G., September 2013).^[51] On the other hand, when in 1985 specific requirements for the characters appeared in the instructions to participants, such requirements were also formulated for the Gypsies, stating that they “should represent the characteristic actions of the folkloric exemplar”.^[52]

The disparate and changing instructions to performers, partly caused by the continuous debates among organizers and researchers, also led to confusion among the performers themselves. Despite these inconsistencies, the adopted ideological line inevitably led to a number of changes in masquerade practices. As a result of the measures taken to “make sense” of the traditions in various settlements, many of the officially postulated theses began to be reproduced literally. Georg Kraev (1985: 46) even reported that the leaders of some kukeri groups were making up local history, most often claiming that the ritual dated back to the time of the Thracians, and that during the period of “Turkish yoke” it had been used by the haiduks to protect the enslaved people. Following the recommendation for theatrical “miniatures” and supported by the desire for originality, many kukeri groups (mainly in the Sub-Balkan region) included in their acts the aforementioned theatricalized scenes from Ivan Vazov’s novel Under the Yoke (1893) with the characteristic characters and props. In the village of Dunavtsi in the region of Kazanlak, it is recorded how the Turks attacked the wedding, which was subsequently saved by the kukeri.^[53] In some settlements, kukeri groups staged even larger-scale historical reenactments (Fig. 28). National symbols also appeared in the costumes dyed in the colours of the Bulgarian flag, in the rebel-band and generals’ uniforms of the leaders, in the inscriptions “1300 years of Bulgaria” on the bells, and in the masks portraying Bulgarian revolutionaries.^[54]

Fig. 28. Reenactment of Hristo Botev’s band of rebels during the kukeri games in the village of Turiya, South Bulgaria, 1969. Source: Central State Archives, f. 720, op. 5, a. e. 77-I-1.

Particularly indicative of the results of ideological work are the annotations of the kukeri groups participating in the festival, in which they were required to describe the ritual they presented.^[55] As early as 1970, it was claimed in various parts of the country that the masquerade was pagan, anti-religious, held “in honour of Dionysus” and “preserved to remind us of the ancient Thracians”. It had been banned by the Church, by the Ottomans, but was encouraged by “the people’s government” (i.e., the communist regime). The masquerade was seen as “one of the means of preserving the Bulgarian national feeling” in the years when the Bulgarian people had to fight both against the “Turkish political yoke” and against the “Greek nationalist encroachment on Bulgarianness”. The occasional clashes at meetings between groups were attributed to ideological contradictions. The mummers were the “good spirits” who fought the “evil spirits”; they guarded the Bulgarians from the encroachments of the Turks: with their swords the kukeri “joyfully caressed the men, but when faced with non-Christians (Turks), they would stroke them in a Botev-like manner, as if they were shaving them, and then run [their swords] along the neck, telling them what awaited them. This had a symbolist meaning which the ignorant Ottomans did not understand.” According to the neo-mythologizing descriptions, many times “revolutionaries had hidden under the masks”; performers from the village of Turiya had even found out that one of the members of Botev’s band of rebels had been a “passionate kuker”. Another important element of the props – the bells – was also laden with symbolic meaning: their loud clanging “awakens the people’s spirit to fight against the enslaver”, while with their dance the kukeri “express their readiness to fight back against the Turks”. In the village of Sadovik, Breznik region, there was a legend about the emergence of the masquerade as a reaction of the “young and high-spirited men” against the Turks, who were “frightened and gradually moved out” of the village.^[56] The Bulgarian nation’s diligence was also mentioned: the kukeri “already since pagan times have reflected the diligence of the Bulgarian”, arousing “thirst for life and high work successes during the year”.

Following the organizers’ recommendations, the kukeri groups “made sense of” and enriched the content of the custom. For example, the survakari from the village of Elov Dol, Zemen region, noted in their description that through the Gypsies, “the people emphasizes and ridicules laziness”.^[57] For the villages of Turiya and Pavel Banya, the Gypsy woman with a baby was a symbol of fertility,^[58] but the Gypsies were also “exponents of evil forces”.^[59] In another village in the region of Stara Zagora, Tarnicheni, the Gypsies were interpreted as follows: “poverty is personified by the black barbuli-masks, in the person of Gypsy men and women, with a whole retinue of Gypsy children, black Arapi and monkeys” (Kraev, 1985: 47). These renderings were also the result of the organizers’ requirement for creating theatrical miniatures, in which Gypsies were usually cast as the “bad guys”. And one more thing: kukeri group leaders to this day limit the number of Gypsy characters when participating in competitive festivals, and exclude them altogether when it comes to foreign carnivals. Yet in local celebrations, Gypsies are not sanctioned, quite the contrary: “A group without Gypsies isn’t a group”, say some mummers.

These observations once again demonstrate the “continuous loop of knowledge that involves different types of social agents: individuals, groups, and institutions” (Testa, 2017: 121). As Alessandro Testa (ibid.) has noted in reference to the “cultural bricolage” that is at work in European carnivals, “[l]ocal sentiments and practices merge with translocal imaginaries and academic notions through dynamics of circulation and reappropriation that become components of an engine which, in the end, produces social poetics and practices that fuel agency at a community level, and that contribute to the self-representation of the community itself”.

This last example illustrates both the effects of the contradictory instructions and the ambivalence with which mummers perceived and adapted to the institutional requirements. A newspaper description of the procession at the fourth edition of the festival in Pernik (1971) shows that the newly introduced revisions continued to coexist, probably in tension, with elements that subverted the “correct” version of kukeri:

And immediately – the Cherry Cannon with Borimechkata. A wonderful scene from “Under the Yoke” was enacted by the kukeri from Gabarevo, Stara Zagora region. The cannon went off and Borimechkata cried out: “Turkey will fall”. But in a hoarse voice. So many times since the morning had he been crying out, so many times had the cannon been going off! Only in the stadium had Gabarevites loaded it with ammunition five–six times so that all could see them. They also drew attention with the only woman kuker, jumping up and down and clanging her bells along with the men. A giant-sized Dzhamal was led by the kukeri from Voluyak, who “stunned” the audience and the panels of judges. Then, to the beat of zurni and tapani, the rusalii from Petrich paraded through the stadium with slow steps. (Krumov, Stoyanov and Mechev, 1971: 1)

Discussion and Conclusion

Despite the fact that research on mumming dates back to the establishment of the modern Bulgarian state, kukeri became a national symbol relatively late – in the late 1960s (Detchev, 2010: 101). Their inclusion in the national heritage canon and its imagery did not go unquestioned and was marked by a number of selections, revisions and filterings of foreign and unprestigious elements, conducted from positions of power by experts.^[60] It is clear that such procedures invariably accompany the making of cultural heritage and its disciplining as authorized heritage discourse (Smith, 2006). However, it is worth problematizing the ideological premises of the heritagization of masquerade in Bulgaria, as well as its more significant effects, which have also proven to be extremely persistent.

Georg Kraev (2010) very aptly situates the notion of Bulgarian national heritage between the concepts of alaturka and alafranga, whose boundaries, dependencies and interactions were negotiated in the tense dialogue between literacy and orality, that is, upon the transformation of selected fragments of the oral tradition into recorded and to some extent codified “folklore”. The parallel tracing proposed here of the marginalization and reworking of Ottoman influences on the one hand, and the discovery and appropriation of the ancient roots of Bulgarian mumming on the other, illuminates the duration and dynamics of these processes. Similar to the invention of other national emblems (see Detchev, 2010), the case of the kukeri, the work on modelling them as Bulgarian and aestheticizing them for representative purposes, reveal the intersections of the parallel processes of de-Ottomanization and Europeanization in Bulgaria (Lory, 2002: 8ff, 177–183; Kiossev, 2008). A key role in this respect was played by the nationalist turn of the socialist regime, which allowed combining assimilationist policies towards Turkish, Muslim, and Romani minorities with the instrumentalization of arranged folklore and the legitimization of Thracian antiquity as a national antiquity. These trends, also visible in earlier times and valid to a considerable extent today, were marked by changing conceptions and uses of modernization, which was often equated to Europeanization. Here are just a few examples in support of this view: the radical break with the Ottoman past and the refashioning of the Oriental appearance of Bulgarian cities followed the post-Liberation ideal of modernization and accession to Europe and its culture; the emulation of “European” models that was characteristic of different periods, as well as the stigmatization of all things rural, including of some traditional practices, as retrograde (even though they were revalorized later), were also based on the concept of progress; the totalitarian socialist state justified precisely as modernization its actions of forced Bulgarization of Turks, Pomaks and Roma, which silenced their own heritages (Gruev, 2003: 197–226; Neuburger, 2004); in the post-socialist transition, the application of “ready-made” models borrowed from Western capitalist modernity came at the expense of extant local alternatives and not infrequently led to cultural dispossession (Creed, 2011).

This was clearly about “the geopolitics of cultural value” (Herzfeld, 2005: 71), in which the adopted Eurocentric imperative of modernization dominated and – despite the ambivalent attitude towards Europe – organized and ordered the Bulgarian heritage canon, hierarchizing its constituent layers. The discussion can be extended to include the internalized Orientalism (Said, 1978) and the perception of the Ottoman heritage in an entirely negative light; through the strategies of overcoming Balkanism (Todorova, 1997) that led to the “excavation” of more ancient and prestigious heritages; through the nesting Orientalisms (Bakic-Hayden, 1995), insofar as all things ethnically Bulgarian were imagined as being more European than all things Turkish, Muslim, Roma; and through the self-colonization of national culture, which illuminates the traumatic awareness of civilizational absences (Kiossev, 1999). These dynamics are evident in the case of Bulgarian mumming, whose antiquity and exoticism were mobilized to achieve the necessary national self-representation. That is also why the focus was on the museified version of rural rites and their Thracian roots, and not on the later urban masquerades, balls and carnivals that remained on the periphery of scholarly and administrative interest.

However, the prioritization of the external gaze, framed by Orientalist and Balkanist leanings, was not satisfied solely with the nationalization of the ancient heritage. It required that the appropriated ancient heritage replace and in a sense obliterate the more recent Ottoman heritage, which was already regarded as shameful (Ditchev, 2002: 86, 93–94). Through this mechanism of purging what was perceived as Oriental, Bulgarian Europeanization acquired racial and ethnic dimensions (Creed, 2011: 193). As Mary Neuburger (2004: 3) has convincingly demonstrated, the very demarcation of the Muslim presence in Bulgaria and the explicit rejection of Bulgaria’s Ottoman past were integral to nation-building “efforts to usher in a new era of progress and modernity”. Continuing this line of reasoning, the heritagization of kukeri once again displayed the power and persistence of the so-called Catastrophe theory (Kiel, 1985: 33–35), which was – and is – widely accepted in Bulgarian historiography and which defines Ottoman rule solely as a period of destruction, devoid of culture, or at least of a culture that is valuable and worth studying and preserving. Although various studies are increasingly revising this thesis, it continues to dominate Bulgarian public discourse, and more significant studies on intangible heritage seem to be absent.^[61]

What has been said so far points to the epistemological consequences of the refusal to consider Bulgarian culture as interacting with more than one centre, that is, as belonging not only to the European (imagined) cultural community (Lyutskanov, 2021: 25–28), or in certain periods also to the Slavic world. This attitude, together with the refusal to provincialize European culture itself (Chakrabarty, 2000) and to question the essentialist idea of the universal significance of its classical heritage, to a considerable extent constructed the scientific field and in practice predetermined the research questions and subjects in Bulgaria.

On the one hand, this led to the marginalization of the Ottoman Empire’s multiethnic context with its inherent hybridized coexistence and cultural convergence (Neuburger, 2004: 27). Without ignoring the tensions or generalizing the Balkan cultural space, it is known nevertheless that at the level of popular culture there were continuous contacts and interactions that did not respect ethnic and religious boundaries (Lory, 2002: 122–174; Buchanan, 2007; Detrez, 2015: 12–27). This implies taking into account that – unlike in urban environments – in the sphere of traditional culture de-Ottomanization did not produce quick and conclusive results (Todorova, 1997: 180). In some cases this culture of everyday life turned out to be extremely resilient and, despite its Ottoman genesis, could be “already perceived as own and the local population felt a deep intimacy with it” (Detchev, 2010: 114–115, 119). In this sense, as emphasized by Tchavdar Marinov (2010: 397; see also Marinov, 2017) regarding vernacular architecture in the Balkans, the Ottoman heritage did not have narrow ethno-religious boundaries, but rather represented “the product of the centuries-long and otherwise not very harmonious coexistence of different peoples in the former empire – the common political, socioeconomic and cultural framework that made possible the hybridization of different traditions and tastes, themselves always under construction”.

On the other hand, national historiographies invented and hardened ethnic and religious divisions, at times attempting to redraw political boundaries in line with current irredentist ideologies. This approach interrupted the regional cultural continuity (Ditchev, 2002: 93–94) and ignored the fact that, in terms of folklore, the differences were not always ethnic or even less national, but rather regional in nature (Detrez, 2015: 25–26). As the case of kukeri shows, ethnographic and folkloristic practice focused on idealized pre-modern rites and contributed performatively to the establishment of a specific continuity and an immanent authenticity understood as a relic of a prestigious ancient ritual and a characteristic manifestation of the mono-ethnic nation. For a long time, intercultural interactions and transfers, otherwise thematized already by authoritative scholars such as Ivan Shishmanov, Rayna Katsarova, and Stoyan Dzhudzhev, remained in the background. In this way, the contribution of minorities to what was subsequently constructed as a monolithic national culture was underestimated or denied, stigmatized as “Gypsyism” (tsiganiya) (Peycheva, 1998) or “Orientality” (orientalshtina). Among the most striking evidence that this research approach should be reconsidered was the active participation of Romani and Jewish musicians in the transnational and intercultural transformations of the song Üsküdara gider iken (On the way to Üsküdar), as traced in detail by Donna Buchanan (2007), which led to the appearance in Bulgaria of the Strandzha revolutionary anthem Yasen mesets (A clear moon) in the early 20th century. However, the mutual isolation and differentiation between neighbouring countries (Kiossev, 2005) predetermined the focus on one’s own “ethnic land” and did not always allow for a full-fledged dialogue on common, shared or similar phenomena that was unencumbered by the political and identity tasks of the present. In the context of selective work with empirical data, there was also often a lack of attention to the inherently problematic nature of sources (Burke, 1978: 65–87), historical accounts and field observations. Even if we ignore the risky associations with remote ancient rituals, the approach towards late 19th- and early 20th-century records was – and is – mostly uncritical. Positivist descriptions continue to be published today that fail to account for the long-standing and diverse influences on the living mumming, including the active and ambiguous interactions among researchers, administrators, methodologists, and local communities, about which there is already compelling evidence (Kraev, 1983: 84–86; 1985; Cowan, 1988; Petrova, 2014: 252–254; Strahilov, 2014a; Fig. 29 and 30).

Fig. 29. Hristo Vakarelski with the Soviet scholars Sergey Tokarev and Petr Bogatyrev and a survakar from the Pernik region, 1945. Source: Central State Archives, f. 2072K, op. 1, a. e. 34, l. 53.

Fig. 30. Composer Filip Kutev (to the left of the mummer) at Surova in the village of Kosharevo, Breznik region, ca. 1948–1952. Archive of IEFSEM – BAS / British Library, Portfolio I, EAP618/3/1.

Discussing the changes that occurred in kukeri rites via the so-called amateur art activities (hudozhestvena samodeynost), Kraev (1985: 47–48) made the important observation that scripted versions of the masquerade shown during festivals returned to the given village or town, where they acquired the significance of an exemplar of traditional culture. Actually, this was the objective of the policies of the time, but we should stress the persistence of the revisions that linked kukeri rites to national mythology. This strategy, although initially oriented around the legitimation of the socialist regime, proved to be highly successful (Kraev, 2010) and allowed mummers to domesticate the new symbolism, to intimize (after Detchev, 2010) the patriotic meaning of the tradition and to think of it as inherited “from time immemorial”. This is probably also among the reasons for the rise of masquerades, whose vitality was threatened just half a century ago. At that time it was even predicted with confidence that “Bulgarian mumming is slowly but surely doomed to extinction”, as it had lost “its cult-ritual purpose” (Bochev, 1976: 34). Today, the growing number of kukeri groups and festivals in Bulgaria has categorically refuted this prediction and shows that the lost meanings and functions have been replaced by as if even more powerful and totalizing meanings. Participation in international carnivals and especially global policies on cultural heritage reinforce these reflections: the inscription of the masquerade on UNESCO’s Representative List has committed Bulgarians to perceive it, or rather its monumentalized mirror image (Santova, 2014: 47–50), as a national treasure.

The intimization of this symbolic meaning, which implicitly reflects Bulgaria’s anti-Ottoman and pro-European impulses and has turned Bulgarian mumming into a “cultural immunization, a prosopon for the identity of ‘our’ antiquity” (Kraev, 2010), also has other consequences today. It fuels the creation of neomythologies that rework and sustain evolutionist theories. The mixing of scientific and popular discourse continues to reactualize the concept of ancient origins among present-day practitioners of kukeri rites (Petrova, 2014: 248–249; Altanov, 2017: 280–281), as well as in the public sphere (Strahilov, 2018a).^[62] Here is, for instance, a concise account in the recent cultural project The Cult of Dionysus Lives On in Kukeri Games (in Bulgarian) of the community cultural centre in the village of Veselinovo, Southeastern Bulgaria:

According to the ancient authors Homer and Herodotus, the cult of Dionysus was widespread throughout Thrace, his homeland. He was worshipped by all Thracian tribes. The cult of Dionysus passed on to the Bulgarians, too, and lives on in the kukeri games. (Chernite kukeri, n.d.)

In the same vein are also the arguments of the leader of the recently founded kukeri group in Sopot in the central part of the country, explaining why the ancient deity was adopted as a sort of patron by the performers of the masquerade practice:

And why did we call the group Dionisiev Zvan [Dionysian Bell]? People in masks, like our kukeri, were the guardians of Dionysus in Ancient Greece. The kukeri guarded Dionysus to prevent him from being eaten by evil creatures. When he grew up, Dionysian festivals began to be held, during which people walked through the streets with bells and masks on their heads. And since there is no other folklore group in Bulgaria with a similar name, we decided to name our group Dionisiev Zvan. (Velkova, n.d.)

These procedures have contributed to the resacralization of Bulgarian mumming and its transformation into an icon of Bulgarian identity. The same understanding has crystallized into popular claims such as “we are a nation of kukeri, the world cannot do without us” (Tomova, 2007), which illustrates both the power of the heritage discourse and the assignment of contemporary meanings to fragments of folk culture in the context of an uncertain present. Such rethinking allows for the emergence of new hybrid forms that, under the umbrella of an unquestionable all-Bulgarian national folklore, seamlessly innovate and blend attractive elements from different local traditions. Such are, for example, the participation of kukeri in other calendar festivals that also claim to be authentic, or the ever more frequent inclusion of reenactors, usually haiduks from the National Revival period, in local masquerade practices (Strahilov, 2019; Fig. 31 and 32).

Fig. 31. Reenactors from the Haiduti [Haiduks] Association at Surova in the village of Dragichevo, Pernik region, 2018. Source: Bogara Advertising.

Fig. 32. Reenactors from the Plovdiv-based Rodolyubie [Patriotism] Committee parade at festival as part of a survakari group from Radomir, 2020. Photo: The author.

This iconicity is promoted and used by the tourism industry, but it is also very convenient for subsequent political uses. In relation to the rising ethno-nationalism in Bulgaria, we should note that recently, kukeri groups have been supporting anti-democratic causes and participating in events of far-right organizations and political parties (Fig. 33 and 34).^[63] This populist festivity (Petkov, 2019), which instrumentalizes both the symbolism and the choreography, costumes and props coloured in national motifs, constructs and perpetuates an exclusionary understanding of the nation and its heritage.

It is precisely because of the normalization of such anti-democratic attitudes that the processes of production of heritages and their power-based ordering into a national canon need to be examined in greater depth. This is not simply a gesture of demystification, but an opportunity to gain greater insight into contemporary identity dynamics and Bulgarian culture itself. It is therefore not without significance that the institutions of the nation-state, including with the active participation of academia, have constructed Bulgarian mumming as the property of the nation. And because the Bulgarian nation is thought of primarily in ethnic categories relying on linear historical continuity, the heritage discourse about the antiquity, authenticity and purity of the tradition and its bearers has a limiting effect. Once established as the property of the Bulgarians, the descendants of Thracians and Slavs, Bulgarian mumming now allows only the imagined non-Oriental Bulgarianness to be played out and excludes all “deviant” forms and interpretations. The overlapping of these essentializing strategies, implemented simultaneously by the state and its citizens (Herzfeld, 2005: 32), exacerbates the dissonance of the heritage. Very often, therefore, the participation of Roma and the formation of Romani mumming groups is contested and stigmatized as “Gypsyfication” of the custom (Creed, 2011: 186ff; Strahilov, 2018b: 112–124).

Fig. 33. A protest demonstration in Sofia under the slogan “Stop Islamization, Save Bulgaria” organized by the nationalist party VMRO–BND (Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization – Bulgarian National Movement), 2016. Source: BulFoto / OFFNews.bg.

Fig. 34. A protest demonstration against Halloween in Sofia, 2020. Source: bTV.

Despite these trends, it should be noted that Bulgarian mumming still retains its polyphonic character and continues to express many different readings of heritage. Moreover, despite thinning social ties, through their heritage the various communities in Bulgaria have been able to construct and claim local, national, and European belonging, but also to question the foundations of these images. This allows Romani mummers, for instance, to formulate a critique of anti-Gypsyism and to construct their own positive Romani image as a counterpoint to exclusionary ethno-nationalism (Strahilov, forthcoming). In many groups, the zurna is invariably played, and in the intimate space of local festivities the “correct” melodies smoothly and imperceptibly transition into chalga, and the horo chain dance into a kyuchek in “national” costumes. In short, the kukeri convey significant messages about contemporary economic, political, social, and environmental challenges in Bulgaria (see, e.g., Manova, 2009; Strahilov, 2020). All of this sustains the vitality of the traditional practice and its necessity, as Gerald Creed (2011) has brilliantly demonstrated in his book Masquerade and Postsocialism: Ritual and Cultural Dispossession in Bulgaria.

I will end with one last question that arises around the Bulgarian receptions of this book. In his study on relations between Bulgarian and Western scholars, Ilia Iliev (2017: 20, 25) criticizes Creed for ignoring the work of Bulgarian ethnographers and folklorists. In fact, the American anthropologist laconically notes that the existing studies are mostly on the symbolism, meaning, and historical origins of mumming practices, whereas he pursues “a different agenda” (Creed, 2011: 20). In this sense, it seems that if there is a refusal of dialogue, it concerns more the versions of their origins presented above, which at present Bulgarian scholarship itself likewise does not discuss but rather reiterates. On the other hand, although the problem raised by Iliev undoubtedly deserves attention, from today’s point of view even more curious is the almost total ignoring of Creed’s work by the many researchers of masquerade in Bulgaria. In this line of thought, also striking is the insignificant number of Bulgarian publications on mumming that critically examine the collaboration of science with those in power or reflect on contemporary issues without necessarily reconstructing the ancient rites and their relics.

Bearing in mind that the present paper is part of the general discussion on mumming, what has been said so far draws attention to the question of the sensitivity of the Bulgarian humanities and social sciences to social violence (Petrov, 2020), as well as to the ideological foundations of today’s cultural policies. In this regard, I offer three examples.

The first is the National Festival of Bulgarian Folklore in Koprivshtitsa, inscribed on the UNESCO Register of Good Safeguarding Practices. According to the Regulations for the 2015 festival, “eligible for participation are singers, musicians, dancers, narrators of folk tales, legends, riddles and stories, instrumental, vocal, dance, and folk customs groups performing Bulgarian folklore. The participants are from different parts of the country as well as Bulgarians living abroad. Also eligible for participation are foreign citizens performing Bulgarian folklore” (Reglament, 2015, Article 4; emphasis added; cf. Reglament, 2022, Article 4).^[64] Hence the obstacles to the manifestation of minority identity and culture, which are not allowed or remain hidden under the “mask” of monocultural tradition (Peycheva, 2005: 9).

The second example is the choice of the Bulgarian state not to participate in the multinational nomination of the spring celebration of Hıdrellez for inscription on UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.^[65] Here we should mention that living traditional practices associated with Hıdrellez and Saint George’s Day are found in various Muslim and Christian communities throughout Bulgaria. Furthermore, the Alian carnival festivities performed on Hıdrellez in the village of Bisertsi have been inscribed – although not unproblematically – on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of the Republic of Bulgaria. However, the international visibility of this ethnocultural diversity seems to be contested.

The third example is the academic publication Cultural heritage in migration. Models of consolidation and institutionalization of the Bulgarian communities abroad (Penchev et al., 2017; in Bulgarian), the result of a large-scale, significant research project of the same name. It undoubtedly contains important observations and conclusions on a problematic that had not been studied so comprehensively until then. On the other hand, the collection of articles reveals a seemingly unquestionable, sterile understanding of Bulgarianness, which does not reflect the fact that emigration affects all ethno-religious communities.

The examples sketched here attest to the still continuing selective valorization of heritage, which is interpreted, promoted, safeguarded and analysed within a narrow national framework.^[66] Returning to the common thread of tensions between the concepts of alaturka and alafranga, my reflection joins Svanibor Pettan’s (2007: 375) opinion, who underlines that this relationship mirrors “fundamental dilemmas that mark the lives of humankind in the early twenty-first century, [and] reminds us that balanced knowledge and understanding of the past can and should strengthen our sense of responsibility in dealing with various co-existing options and assist us in making decisions about the future”.

Archival Sources

Archive of the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies with Ethnographic Museum at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (IEFSEM – BAS):

AEIM [Archive of the Ethnographic Institute with Museum] No. 400-II: Kuker masks, etc. [drawings]. Rositsa Georgieva, n.d.

AEIM No. 523: Description of kukeri customs from the regions of Karnobat and Yambol. Recorded by Elena Georgieva, 1948.

AEIM No. 585: Kukeri customs from the region of Breznik (Stanyovtsi, Dolna Sekirna). Recorded by Bogomil Kanchev, 1948.

AIF [Archive of the Institute of Folklore] No. 42: Folkloric materials from the village of Yardzhilovtsi, Pernik region. Recorded by Stanka Yaneva, 1976.

AIF No. 169: Masquerade games. Recorded by Georg Kraev, 1977.

AIF I No. 21 II: Folkloric materials from the villages of Krasava and Zavala, Breznik region. Recorded by Nataliya Rashkova, 1987.

State Archive (SA) – Pernik:

Fond No. 993: Nikolov, Yordan (Dancho) Antonov (1910–1992).

Fond No. 1134: International Festival of Masquerade Games – Pernik (1966–).

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Translated by Katerina Popova

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[1] In this paper, by Gypsies I will mean only the masquerade characters called “Gypsies”, who are usually played by non-Roma.

[2] This criticism refers to the more general negative attitudes towards chalga and popfolk in contemporary Bulgarian society (see Statelova, 2005; Levy, 2010), while the story of the kukeri and the kyuchek is strongly reminiscent of the ambivalent attitude towards Oriental melodies and dances during the Bulgarian Revival (see Gavrilova, 1999: 295–296).

[3] This paper draws on empirical material collected within the framework of two projects financed by the Bulgarian National Science Fund: “The New Festivity: Communities, Identities, and Policies in Bulgaria in the 21st Century” (Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”, Contract No. DN 05/7 of 14 December 2016) and “Reliving the Past: Historical Reenactments as a Cultural Phenomenon” (Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies with Ethnographic Museum at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Contract No. KP-06-OPR05/13 of 17 December 2018).

[4] AEIM No. 523, l. 9. The kukeri custom was not the only such example – the Roma also turned out to be continuers of other traditional practices and crafts that had been abandoned by the surrounding population (Popov, 1992: 65–66).

[5] SA [State Archive] – Pernik, f. 993, op. 1, a. e. 63, l. 67.

[6] The few studies on these issues remain on the periphery of the debate (e.g., Kraev, 1983; 1985; 2010; Bakalova, 2009; Bokova, 2010; Petrova, 2014; Strahilov, 2014a; 2019).

[7] On the development of similar processes in a wider European context, see the recent studies by Alessandro Testa and Cyril Isnart (Testa, 2020; Testa and Isnart, 2020).

[8] Dimitrina Chalakova (2012: 78–198) has presented a large part of the scholarly, popular-science, and journalistic materials on the subject. Historiographical reviews, on which the present paper is based, have been made by Stoyan Raychevski (1993) and Georg Kraev (1996: 5–15). Critical comments on some of the more popular interpretations of the kukeri masquerade can be found in Kraev (1989: 214, note 1; 1996: 5–15), Slavka Grebenarova (1994), Milena Benovska-Sabkova (1994: 4, 10–11), Ganka Mihaylova (2002: 99–100), and Kalina Bakalova (2009: 8–12).

[9] Shishmanov also expressed his concerns about foreign influences and was mainly interested in national culture. A similar ambivalent view is found later in the musicologist and folklorist Stoyan Dzhudzhev, who defended a categorically ethnocentric perspective on Bulgarian folk music (see Naydenova, 2010) and at the same time acknowledged the presence of Indian and Arabic borrowings in it, stressing “how permeable and as if non-existent the ethnic and territorial boundaries are for music, and how imperceptibly elements are absorbed of the lifestyle and culture of peoples who do not even live next door and have no linguistic or racial kinship” (Dzhudzhev, 1976: 23; see also Detrez, 2015: 17–18). During the 1977 Pernik festival, Dzhudzhev presented a paper entitled “Kukeri – carriers of traces of the old Thracian musical culture” (in Bulgarian; Georgiev, 2016: 6).

[10] Raychevski (1993: 8–10) summarizes in Bulgarian Vizyenos’s account written in 1888.

[11] On the scientific formation of the first generation of Bulgarian professional Thracologists in the academic institutions of Germany and Austria-Hungary, see Marinov (2012).

[12] In 1923 the Russian poet and classical philologist Vyacheslav Ivanov (1994: 123; see also Kraev, 1996: 13) again recalled the carnival at Vize, recorded by Dawkins, to reaffirm the connection with Dionysus and the vitality of Hellenic paganism. This wasn’t the first time that Russian scholars had noticed the kukeri – as early as 1882, the Slavist Vladimir Kachanovskiy (1882: 3–4) noted in his collection of materials from Western Bulgaria that there were masquerades around New Year.

[13] The thesis regarding the ancient origins of the kukeri masquerade was also rejected by other Soviet scholars of the 1950s and 1960s (see Gabrovski, 1980: 42).

[14] Teodorov was referring to carnival customs among the Alians in the village of Sevar performed on Hıdrellez, but he did not mention this (see below).

[15] Here are some of the official local representations of Kukerovden in Malko Tarnovo, which was revived by the local authorities in 2011 after a long hiatus: “The Strandzha ‘white kuker’ is the most ancient form of celebration of this festival in Bulgaria. … It is found solely and only in Strandzha in its most archaic form, ‘white kuker’, i.e. a kuker without a mask, with an open face”, we read on the tourist portal of Malko Tarnovo (accessed 21 April 2020). This version is also supported by the secretary of the local chitalishte (community cultural centre): “The kuker is without a mask, his face is open and painted in black. His costume is symbolic, made up of seven sheepskins. Other important characters from the [kukeri] group are the king and the old woman. The king plays the role of God’s deputy on Earth, while the old woman plays the role of the Great Mother Goddess” (Drencheva, 2019).

[16] The “Slavic” interpretation of the masquerade, mainly around New Year, also had its supporters (e.g., Manova, 1977: 29; Gabrovski, 1980). Meanwhile, other interpretations have also appeared – some view the non-Dionysian elements in kukeri rites as relics of Kabyrian rituals (Gicheva-Meimarie, 2007; 2009), while others refer to prehistory (Nikolova, 1995; Grębska-Kulow, 2014, 2016; Zidarov and Grębska-Kulow, 2013: 107–108).

[17] On masking among Pomaks, see also Shishkov (1892: 43). On masquerade customs among the Torbeshi in Macedonia, preserved in the late 20th century, see Limanoski (1998).

[18] On the changing policies towards minorities in Bulgaria in this period, see, e.g., Marinov (2009).

[19] On residual manifestations of such nationalist mythologemes, see Sirakova (1995: 138).

[20] See also Arnaudov (1972: 78–79, note 15). For similar practices among the Torbeshi in Macedonia, see Limanoski (1998). Masking at weddings is also known among Christians from different parts of Bulgaria (Ivanova, 1994: 38).

[21] It should be noted that masquerades in Turkey are also associated with Greek antiquity and Dionysus. We find similar interpretations regarding masquerade practices in Georgia (Rukhadze and Chitaya, 1976; Odisheli, 2019). I thank Donna Buchanan for drawing my attention to the Georgian traditions.

[22] Here we can quote Ganka Mihaylova’s critical reflection on socialist ethnography, which – influenced by the Soviet school – focused on searching for the ethnically specific and Bulgarian. In addition to the insularity of Bulgarian science, this produced very controversial results: “You compare yourself with yourself and claim that this is specifically Bulgarian because it existed in Bulgaria. ... Now, if you prove that it doesn’t exist anywhere else, you can claim that it is specifically Bulgarian, but you have no information about what it is elsewhere” (Luleva and Rakshieva, 2006: 13–14).

[23] AEIM No. 523.

[24] In fact, the text largely repeated an earlier popular-science publication (see Yordanova, 1983: 85–99).

[25] Romani zurna players and tapan players accompany masqueraders in Northern Greece (Blau et al., 2002), as well as in North Macedonia. The zurna and tapan are also characteristic of the masquerade in some villages in the region of Plovdiv.

[26] AEIM No. 585, l. 11.

[27] AIF No. 42, l. 9–10.

[28] AIF I No. 21 II, l. 135. It does not become entirely clear from the record, but here the informant may have been referring solely to the Gypsy characters (“those that are appointed to beg for” gifts from the householders), and not necessarily to the whole masquerade band.

[29] The dzhamaldzhii in Godech, who revived the local masquerade tradition in 2019–2020, are also called Gypsies (cf. Videnov, 1994).

[30] As regards the popular thesis according to which the specific clothing (torn clothes) of the Gypsy characters is taken from the “real life” of Roma, Mirella Decheva (2004) has pointed out perceptively that Roma folklore consists of a rich range of colours and clothes that is opposite to that practised by ethnic Bulgarians in masquerades.

[31] This urban festival includes a parade and staged performances of mumming traditions judged by different specialists. On the creation, history and development of the festival, see Manova (1999) and Bokova (1999).

[32] SA – Pernik, f. 933, op. 1, a. e. 5, l. 67.

[33] SA – Pernik, f. 933, op. 1, a. e. 14, l. 62–67.

[34] SA – Pernik, f. 993, op. 1, a. e. 28, l. 45

[35] SA – Pernik, f. 993, op. 1, a. e. 45.

[36] Encouraged by the Pernik festival, in the 1970s and 1980s a number of choreographers from chitalishta and larger folk ensembles created stage productions inspired by masquerade themes. Among their titles are names such as Kukeri, Kuker rhythms, Roots, Kuker and maiden, Kukvengeri, Survakari, Kuker dance, etc. (SA – Pernik, f. 1134, op. 1, a. e. 11).

[37] SA – Pernik, f. 993, op. 1, a. e. 28, l. 45.

[38] SA – Pernik, f. 1134, op. 1, a. e. 4, l. 1–4.

[39] SA – Pernik, f. 1134, op. 1, a. e. 5, l. 7.

[40] SA – Pernik, f. 993, op. 1, a. e. 28, l. 45.

[41] SA – Pernik, f. 993, op. 1, a. e. 37.

[42] The recollections of the ethnochoreologist Anna Ilieva are revealing about how methodological work among local communities was done at that time: “First, they were told in the chitalishta [to which amateur folklore ensembles were attached under socialism] what they could and could not do. Then, in the municipal reviews, some were eliminated and the good ones were selected [to participate in festivals]. We used to tell them what to emphasize – we were basically teaching them, at the reviews themselves we were teaching them to recognize the authentic. We taught them a lot. We were very much involved in preparing [them for] festivals. I remember, in the Sofia villages – around Gorni Bogrov – upon some later festivals, they used to do a lot of municipal reviews there. I went to a village, they were doing [the rain ritual] Peperuda, Dódola, but it was entirely made-up. I was shocked, I’d never seen anything so bizarre. I asked them, ‘Can I come, let’s talk to the old women, can you pick out some old women for me?’ They said, ‘Yes, of course.’ After this review – which was attended by several of us to prepare [them], to see what they were going to send to [the festival in] Koprivshtitsa – they set a date for me to go [to the village]. I went and we started interviewing [the informants] – it [turned out that the way the ritual was performed] was totally made-up! The old women said, ‘Well, we’ve never done anything so bizarre!’ And we reconstructed it from the old women’s accounts – they told the younger ones all about it, and we did the Dódola properly. Because what we were teaching them was quite different from what choreographers and [ensemble] directors expected from them, people were going crazy wondering who to please. The result was at ‘Koprivshtitsa’, but before ‘Koprivshtitsa’ there were regional festivals, before the regional festivals there were municipal ones, and before them there were village festivals. There was a long period when... even the dogs in the villages knew me. I went there so many times. We were seconded from the institutes. We worked very, very hard!” (Rashkova, 2015: 279–280).

[43] SA – Pernik, f. 1134, op. 1, a. e. 2, l. 17.

[44] SA – Pernik, f. 993, op. 1, a. e. 5, l. 56–60. It should be noted that in these notes Dancho Nikolov recognized the appearance of the bolyukbashii as an Ottoman influence.

[45] SA – Pernik, f. 993, op. 1, a. e. 5, l. 60; emphasis added.

[46] SA – Pernik, f. 1134, op. 1, a. e. 5, l. 6.

[47] SA – Pernik, f. 1134, op. 1, a. e. 5, l. 21.

[48] SA – Pernik, f. 993, op. 1, a. e. 5, l. 99–102.

[49] There is a typographical error in the original: tsiganshti instead of tsiganshtini/tsiganii.

[50] SA – Pernik, f. 993, op. 1, a. e. 33, l. 136, 138–139.

[51] According to the preserved documentation, a Gypsy character was awarded only once – this was the Gypsy group from the town of Zemen. This happened much later, at a municipal review selecting participants in the national festival in Pernik in 1990 (SA – Pernik, f. 1134, op. 1, a. e. 32).

[52] SA – Pernik, f. 1134, op. 1, a. e. 2, l. 17.

[53] AIF No. 169.

[54] AEIM No. 400-II.

[55] SA – Pernik, f. 993, op. 1, a. e. 34, l. 1–41. Unless otherwise indicated, all quotes in this paragraph are from the archival unit referenced herein.

[56] For the contemporary version of this legend, see Georgieva (2009). A similar account was recorded in the village of Vresovo, Aytos region (Katsarova, 1970: 43).

[57] SA – Pernik, f. 993, op. 1, a. e. 34.

[58] SA – Pernik, f. 993, op. 1, a. e. 34. In the 1990s, a group of participants disguised as Ku Klux Klan members, who set fire to the Gypsies, appeared in Pavel Banya (Petrova, 1996: 108, 110–111).

[59] SA – Pernik, f. 993, op. 1, a. e. 33, l. 139.

[60] On the construction of national symbols in Bulgaria more generally, see Detchev (2010); on immovable heritage and its tourist uses, see Koleva (2020).

[61] Darin Stephanov’s (2018) recent study on the ruler-related celebrations in the late Ottoman Empire and their multiple interactions with and consequences for local populations, including non-Muslim subjects, gives an important perspective towards the politico-cultural influences in the Ottoman and post-Ottoman ecumene. Similarly, the heritage of Ottoman panayırs, fairs and festivals is also significant (cf. on modern Turkish history Yılmaz and Deal, 2021).

[62] We can easily find similar strategies in neighbouring countries, where the intertwining of politics with history, archaeology and folklore is evident. Such is the inclusion of the figure of Dionysus in the babougera ritual in Kali Vrisi, whereby the local Slavic-speaking population declares its belonging to the Greek nation (Papakostas, 2015). In some carnivals in the Republic of North Macedonia, one can see masks of Alexander the Great with his army, of Tsar Samuil, of komiti (freedom fighters), etc. (Milošeska, 2007: 247–250).

[63] For example, kukeri participated in a protest in Sofia against refugees and “Islamization”, organized by the nationalist VMRO party  (2016); in a blockade of the Bulgarian-Turkish border organized by the United Patriots coalition to prevent Bulgarian citizens living in Turkey from exercising their right to vote in Bulgaria (2017); in a protest Sunday horo chain dance in Sofia against Bulgaria’s ratification of the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence (2018); in annual protest marches against the celebration of Halloween, denounced as a foreign tradition (see also Strahilov, 2018b: 109; 2019: 130, 135–136).

[64] The Regulations for the twelfth edition of the festival in Koprivshtitsa in 2022 introduced two important changes: (1) the festival is renamed to National Festival of Folklore, and (2) it is stated that eligible for participation are “bearers and heirs (group and individual) of local intangible cultural heritage … from all regions of the country, who represent local traditions” (Reglament, 2022, Article 4; emphasis added), not, as previously, “Bulgarian folklore”.

[65] The nomination was initiated by Turkey, which should also be taken into account. Originally, the nomination file included the celebration of Hıdrellez and Saint George’s Day by traditional practices in Croatia, (North) Macedonia, Serbia, Romania, Moldova and Turkey, but the nomination submitted in 2014 was rejected. Thus, in 2017, only the celebration of Hıdrellez in North Macedonia and Turkey was inscribed on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

[66] With few exceptions, the topic of heritage selectivity tends to be glossed over in Bulgarian science (see Petrov, 2014; Peycheva, 2014; cf. Santova, 2015).

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Biographical note

Ivo Strahilov, PhD in Cultural Studies, is Senior Assistant Professor at the Department of History and Theory of Culture at Sofia University “St Kliment Ohridski”. He works in the field of Critical Heritage Studies.

Email: i.strahilov[at]phls.uni-sofia.bg