VENCISLAV DIMOV (Institute of Folkore, BAS, Sofia, Bulgaria)

Contemporary Ethnopop Music in Bulgarian Mass Media

Today the contemporary ethnopop is the only music competing with the Western pop music in the Bulgarian everyday life and mass media. Although created, performed and spread by Bulgarian authors, musicians and producers it is rather Balkan than Bulgarian.

The present paper discusses some aspects of the contemporary Bulgarian ethnopop music as a cultural industry. The main stress is on the functioning of this music via the mass media of the 1990s. Special pages on ethnopop music have appeared in the newspapers with greatest circulation. The newly founded private radio stations have specialized programs for this kind of music. Regional TV channels and even the National Television regularly show programs and clips with Bulgarian ethnopop songs.

The discussion covers the creation of hits and stars, the mass media as a developing and advertising institution in musical industry, cassette culture, commercialization, the acommpanying liberalization of the market and national broadcasting as well as some other problems in media existence of contemporary Bulgarian ethnopop music.