Celebrating its 80th anniversary, Radio Bulgaria welcomes you to monthly voting for music from Bulgaria. Lots will be drawn to select the names of the winners – people who have guessed the winning song or tune. Three of them are going to win CDs with music in the respective genre. There are three entries for each month as the winning tune is the one that attracted the highest number of votes from our listeners from around the world. To vote, please send us an e-mail at english@bnr.bg.

Results will be announced on the 15th of every month.

The genres that open the chart correspond to the music streams in the upper right hand corner of Radio Bulgaria’s website. The selection of pieces is by the authors of the respective streams. So, we take this opportunity to present to you these colleagues. They answer questions about their earliest memories of music and radio, the ideas, principles and possible compromises that are all part of creating the streams.

Zdravko Petrov hosts pop music shows for the Bulgarian National Radio channel for culture. He also teaches history of pop music to students at the National Academy of Music. How did he get into music at the radio? At age 5, his parents took him to an audition at the Music School where he was first trained to play the violin. At twelve he switched to piano. As a teenager he discovered the charm of pop music listening to radio, the most common listening option at that time:

„We listened a lot to the Bulgarian National Radio, and I even recorded radio shows on cassettes. My first memory is from the show Voices and Melodies We Remember that introduced me to retro music”.

Work on the stream with Bulgarian music has opened up a great many new opportunities for Zdravko – while digitizing the old recordings he discovered for himself and for his listeners music from 30 to 40 years ago.

„The tracks from the radio archives were most probably played on shows only when recorded and later fell in oblivion, and this is perfectly normal in radio work”.

It is also perfectly normal for work at BNR – a dream for many including Zdravko – to enrich knowledge about various genres of music that are part of the BNR music library wealth. The so-called Bulgarian estrada (pop music) has earned Zdravko quite a few fans in the country where this music product was massively exported to, years ago – Russia. It is surprising for him that Russian listeners remember great singers who died long ago – like Pasha Hristova and Emil Dimitrov. This corroborates his strategy to focus on songwriters and singers who have gone from this world and to mine for forgotten names which is a great way to challenge listeners.

„Here are a few examples – Krasimira Mineva recorded a series of songs in 1960s and then virtually disappeared; Nina Svetoslavova and Rositsa Nikolova belong to the same group. Maria Mitseva has been living abroad since 1969. I found a few recordings of Milcho Leviev as conductor of the BNR Big Band, and some of his works too”. Milcho was banned from radio programs when he was invited to USA by jazzman Don Ellis and emigrated from Bulgaria in 1970.

Zdravko never compromises on his playlist – he sometimes refuses to play unprofessional recordings suggested by fans. Where the archives of the Bulgarian National Radio are concerned though, he only seldom would censor a song. This only happens if its lyrics are openly sham or political. Zdravko objects, saying he never censors, but selects tracks in compliance with the mission of a public medium. Well, of course, he has the perfect qualifications and experience to carry out a fairly good selection.

The charts that Zdravko offers begin in the month of love and wine – February – as on both 1^st and 14^th February Bulgarians celebrate the festival of the vine and wine – so his selection of pop music necessarily accentuates the taste of wine and love.

You can cast your vote for one of three songs from the pop music stream:

And here the names of the three winners chosen by lot among those who guessed the song that collected the highest number of votes in the first edition of Radio Bulgaria’s new music chart – Musicbox Bulgaria. The song is “Altun Stoyan” performed by Vulkana Stoyanova and Nikola Ganchev. 

Hugo Longhi, Argentina (listener of RB's Spanish section)

Dahmani Rashid, Algeria (listener of RB's Arabic section)

Sanusi Isah Dankaba, Nigeria (listener of RB's English section)

We extend our congratulations to the winners and we expect your votes in the current edition of our music chart!