site.btaLIK Magazine's October Issue to Be Dedicated to Jazz Music's Presence in Bulgaria

“Bulgaria in Jazz” is the theme of LIK magazine's October issue. The publication of the Bulgarian News Agency (BTA) is dedicated to jazz music and the jazz festivals organised across the country. The premiere of the issue will be held on November 14 in Ruse jointly via video link with BTA’s national press clubs in Bulgaria and abroad.

On the same date, the Danube city will also host the opening of the 48th edition of Bulgaria’s oldest active jazz festival – the Ruse National Jazz Meeting, first held in 1975.

In his introduction to the issue, BTA Director General Kiril Valchev notes that there are debates whether that is the oldest jazz festival in the country, as the agency’s archives preserve a report from a year earlier about a three-day jazz event in Yambol (Southeastern Bulgaria).

In her article, Prof. Claire Levy, associate member of the Institute of Art Studies at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, takes LIK readers “Through the History of Jazz in Bulgaria.” “Having emerged in the context of African American culture more than a century ago, jazz today carries the meaning of a cosmopolitan code in contemporary music,” she writes. She adds that, viewed in the context of Bulgarian music, jazz undoubtedly fits within the modernizing processes that strongly influenced local culture in the early 20th century, particularly in relation to the new urban notions of entertainment.

Zhelyazka Belchilova - singer and PhD of musicology and musical art - writes about the oldest jazz festival in the country (the one in Ruse), the newest (Hisarya Jazz), and JeZzerets in Shabla (on the Black Sea coast), chosen because “a festival in a small settlement is that paradoxical yet eloquent gesture through which jazz unfolds beyond the centres and finds a home in communities where every cultural event is a celebration.”

The LIK magazine also includes a map of jazz festivals in Bulgaria, listing around 70 different events - most of them still active today, others discontinued over time, and some featuring only jazz elements.

The October issue also offers interviews with musicians, jazz festival organizers, and mayors of towns where such events take place.