Hi, thanks for the input! I'll share some thoughts as well. Bear in mind though, it is really complicated and definetely not Cracked material.
I must admit, to entirely comprehend chalga culture and its main weapon: the music, is hugely impossible if you haven't experienced the Balkan mindset personally. Sadly, I am not the one to elaborate well enough on this, because I haven't really cared much for our society 'till now and I have a lot of catching up to do. Anyway, I suggest you people watch some Emir Kusturica films. He portrays (and mocks) the Balkan mentality in the best and most righteous way possible. These films will probably seem just as strange as my article to you, the rest of the world folks, but nevertheless, they are a very good watch.
Nimby: I... I am not entirely sure that I understood this article, but I don't know if it's because of the wording or the insanity of the topic, or possibly both.
If you really feel like that AND cracked a laugh here and there while reading it, then this article is accomplished :)
@Ziggy
Thanks for providing some creative thought! Bulgaria is pretty much worth a topic itself, but since I'm very young and admit to having an extremely basic grasp of my country's history and what has really happened during the time I was brought up (some truly sad and pathetic political shit), I do not feel in the right position for that. Though I can assure you, we don't need adverts to sell watermelon ;] The watermelon commercials are for a drink called Mastic - a lovely gift from our greek neighbours. Think Sambuca with more organic flavour that goes really well with a slice of watermelon in the summer afternoon.
The men with the golden chains in my article, as I later understood, are actually gipsies from Romania, but our mutri look and behave exactly the same so whatever. Mutri stories and the Bulgarian mafia fill the tabloids in here. I don't have enough material for a solo article, but you can probably get a kick from
this. The Galevi bros ftw!
Bulgarian music will be a hard article because the loss in translation will be inevitable. I'm not up for it. See, Japanese and, say, Russian musicians have the lovely habit of singing in english which is a real ease. We have our Bulgarian puff daddies and milli vanilli's, but there's absolutely nothing unseen about them - they sing the same dumb shit you and me laugh at, only they do it in Bulgarian. They don't even look funny like our Japanese comrades. And they have none of the impact that chalga has on our society and values. Most of our popular musicians do what musicians from the west did three or five years ago, and this goes way back in time as a result of the Iron Curtain - Bulgarians were just discovering things that the other nations were now forgetting and we never quite caught up. This goes to every sphere of our lives, not just music. There's been some progress though, especially since we got in the EU.
With so much negative talk of my country, I must even out the image with something positive. We are not Borats. Obligatory assholes and mutri aside, we are reasonably civilised people who are very hospitable, laid back and open. This goes mostly for the younger generation, but still. We have our cultural and artistic monuments. And we invented youghurt :)
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