The first EU Songbook has been released, featuring six songs from each of the 27 EU member countries and Ode to Joy, the anthem of the European Union,  reports BTA. The Songbook, a non-profit Danish initiative, has no financial ties to the EU, according to the organizers from The European Union Songbook Association, responsible for its creation.

The song selection was curated by members of 17 music academies from 14 EU countries. Over 100 music organizations and conservatories participated in creating The EU Songbook. A public vote on the selected songs involved over 87,000 citizens from all EU countries.

The songs from the EU Songbook are presented in their original language, and there is an English-language version which can be sung. Editors of the songbook for Bulgaria are Assoc. Prof. Zhan Pehlivanov and Prof. Dr. Toni Shekerdzhieva-Novak from the Academy of Music, Dance and Visual Arts "Prof. Asen Diamandiev" in Plovdiv. The lyrics were translated by Desislava Sofranova, music director of the Bulgarian adaptations of Disney, Dreamworks and Warner, songwriter and lyric writer who took up the challenge of translating the six Bulgarian songs into English.

Bulgarian singers from various choirs, music students, and teachers from the Music Academy and the Academy of Music, Dance, and Fine Arts in Plovdiv proposed 56 Bulgarian songs.

In the Love Songs category, the EU Songbook includes The World is for Two (Svetat e za dvama).

For the Nature and Seasons category, You Are Lovely, My Forest (Hubava si, moya goro) was selected, and in the Folk Songs category, the classic folk song Izlel e Delyo Haydutin was chosen.

The categories Freedom and Peace and Songs of Faith will introduce Europeans to the timeless Bulgarian songs A Bulgarian Rose (Edna balgarska roza) and If You Have Given (Ako si dal).

Among children's songs, My Childhood (Detstvo moe) was selected.

Here is what the founder of the association behind the project, Jeppe Marsling from Denmark, says about the aim of the EU songbook: “The book is intended for all kinds of meetings between all kinds of people, in good times as well as in times of crisis: for education, concerts, diplomatic events, for first conversations on a train or in a café. We are hoping to reach out to song lovers in the EU, and outside it, in the applicant countries and all over the world.”

The mobile EU songbook application, which includes all of the songs, can be downloaded, free of charge, from Google Play and AppStore.