Forging Ahead, Comfort Zones, Changes

It's been another one of those weeks.

It all started on Thursday. Since getting back from Berlin, I had been watching videos of some of the groups that performed at the 2010 Koprivshtitsa Folklore Festival as part of my research. The idea is that by watching performances of the pertinent types of music, I can get a feel (and make objective qualifications) of the state of folklore today, which is, of course, essential to the comparative analysis I'm doing. So, I spent the beginning of another week sitting in the library at BAN, watching videos, making transcriptions, and taking notes.

But there was only enough material to last a couple of days, so I finally made my way, along with my adviser, over to the archives of the Institute of Art Studies, where I first had to get set up. Which meant having to explain myself and ask for help. Not typically a problem for me anymore, except:

My adviser understands English fairly well, but is uncomfortable speaking it, which is more or less the same relationship I have with Bulgarian, except I think that her understanding of my mother tongue is better than mine of hers. So our conversations tend to be in Bulgarian - simple Bulgarian, unable as I am to understand or articulate anything complex. These conversations tend to make me nervous, as I will admit to being a bit intimidated by trying to keep up semi-academic discussions in a language not my own. 

However, we've hit on more or less an ideal solution. We typically communicate by email, as both of us are entirely competent readers of each other's languages, provided academic or overly floral registers have been avoided. She writes me in Bulgarian, I respond in English, and we understand each other satisfactorily. This works just fine, unless there are occasions when face-to-face contact is a necessity.

Like Thursday. As we went to the archives to get set up, I was my typically nervous self, straining to make out enough words per sentence to put together its basic meaning. I gamely struggled through for close to an hour, and when we got there, we met the ladies who would be setting me up with my materials. To my sinking realization, they possessed the same knowledge of English as my adviser, so I was forced to continue straining for comprehension--not having had a chance to release the cumulative weight of the previous hour--as we all sat in the listening room and discussed a bit of this and a bit of that. 

I will confess to becoming more and more stressed out by the minute. It's exhausting, and nerve-wracking, trying to prove that you aren't a simpleton to three completely-at-ease speakers within an environment that's entirely comfortable for them, speaking their native language. In a moment of self-awareness, I caught myself huddled up against my chair, making myself as invisible as possible, trying to disappear from the room, and I realized I was more on edge than I had thought.

But something changed when my adviser and one of the assistants left the room and it came down to me speaking one-on-one with the other. As we chatted about life and ourselves--and the pace of the conversation slowed--I relaxed, and to my surprise, found myself understanding more and searching for words less. It made me realize, though it may seem self-evident, that the further inside your comfort zone you are, the better you tend to think. In this case, that meant being able to speak a language with far more ease.

It was a trying experience, but ultimately a valuable one. For most of the year, the lingua franca between myself and the Bulgarian interlocutors with whom I've had extended conversations has usually been English, as in most cases, their English has been better than my Bulgarian. It has certainly been that way as I've spoken to the younger generation of Bulgarians, as knowledge of English is near-universal in schoolchildren in this largest and richest of cities in this country. 

But it was rewarding to have the roles finally be reversed, for the others to have to depend upon my knowledge of their tongue. And it was instructive to see how being within or without one's comfort zone can directly affect one's ability to--broadly--recall information and--specifically--to speak a foreign language. It's now more apparent to me than ever that the best thing I can do for myself is simply to speak this language with others as much as I can in order to expand that particular comfort zone.

To that end, I went today to Sofia's weekly conversation swap, which was a great chance to work my Bulgarian out with people who are there for express purpose of helping foreigners like me work their Bulgarian out, clause by halting clause. And it actually went pretty well, warmed up as I had been from two previous days of racking my brains for the right words to say. The part I was most pleasantly surprised by was my ability to listen and to comprehend meaning. Today was the most successful day I've had in that regard, I think, so it's something to build on.

Today happened to be a fairly representative sample of my week, actually - though I didn't do any research, I spent time speaking Bulgarian, getting things together at home, and going out to the Sofia University metro station--like I've been doing every day this week--and busking with my ukulele, mostly just for the sheer fun of it. I've been playing songs like this, this, this, and this. It's really been quite fun, and while I wouldn't go so far as to call it lucrative, I have managed to put away a (very) little traveling cash.

The only thing diminishing the fun of these jocular one-man jam sessions has been the weather. Yes, sadly, after a semi-pleasant week, capped off by a glorious Thursday, winter, in its death throes, has returned to strike one final blow at the collective morale of the residents of this fine city. If the forecasts are to be believed, it's actually going to snow tomorrow--a fine April Fool's prank if there ever was one--before the climate finally relents for good and Spring begins in earnest. But if it has to happen, it couldn't come at a better time, because:

Fresh off of one international Fulbright conference, I'm headed to another tomorrow, this one in Thessaloniki, Greece. Needless to say, I'm pretty excited, as this will be my first time in Greece, a country which necessitates no reminders of its awesomeness. This conference, well placed in the Springtime, before tourist season picks up, will have me spending 5 days--along with my Bulgarian Fulbright companions Fred and Jamie--in a city with more history than any I've ever been in. Ridiculous? A bit. Fortunate? I am.

So I'll be back in a week with pictures of Greece. Get excited. Until then, Stay Classy.

Here Comes Crunch Time

Things are starting to get real.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I'm down to my last 3 ½ months here, as unbelievable as that is. One of the many things that means is that the time I have left to finish my research and write my thesis is dwindling, and I still have a long trek ahead of me to finish up. 

Still to go on the reading front is my current book, in addition to 3 other long-ish articles, 2 of which are in Bulgarian. After that, I'll be camping out at BAN's audio and video archives, transcribing and analyzing the recordings of the folk songs they contain. Following that will be a fairly intensive week of fieldwork during Holy Week, as I'm hoping to watch celebrations on Лазарувден (Lazarus Saturday, the day before Palm Sunday in the Orthodox Churches), Palm Sunday, and Easter Sunday. Somewhere, in this whirlwind of academic interest, I will also be interviewing Kremena Stancheva, one of the prominent members of the Filip Kutev Ensemble, and then meeting with a few people who are helping me out with other, mainly ethnographic, niches of my research. 

Destination? May 4.

Things are going to be made slightly more difficult by my absences from the country. This Sunday, I'm heading to Berlin for five days, and then two weeks later, I'm going to Thessaloniki (which trip I am looking forward to with an extraordinary amount of anticipation) for another five days. The icing on the fluffy Travel Cake will be my trip back to the States on April 20th for my brother's wedding.

But: If I can somehow adhere to this condensed, somewhat manic schedule, I will be in great shape heading into the "writing leg" of my grant. I had in mind a budget of two months to churn out around a 50-page thesis, and this schedule will give me that. We'll see how well that goes.

I've had my doubts about how well it was going to go because for the last couple of weeks, to be honest with you, I think I've started to mentally check out. I'm going to the school of my dreams next year, and nothing else really seems to matter at this point. I've had a one helluva classic case of senioritis. But the realization that this veritable mountain of work, the very justification for my time here, remains to be done snapped me out of it. Today, at least. We'll see about tomorrow.

But despite my less-than-100%-applied approach the last week or so, I haven't been totally excreting my time away. Renewing my efforts to learn more of this idiosyncratic South Slavic language, I've begun working in my old textbook again, and on Saturday, I went to my first conversation swap. 

It was an interesting affair, multifarious and disorganized, but I managed to find my way to a table where I got some practice speaking Bulgarian (and, inadvertently, a little German) with some indulgent native speakers and a few fellow learners. It was good, much-needed practice.

All the time I've spent in the library deciphering dense, Communist-era texts has done wonders for my reading and comprehension. I got to the point, after I got going today, where I read an entire page on which I could identify most of the words and figure out their meanings by context and etymology; I typically only have to look up about 10% of the words in these texts now. 

This method of learning has presented two problems, however: The vocabulary I've assimilated, made up largely of terms specific to Bulgarian folk singing and ethnomusicology in general, is in a maddeningly academic, ennui-inspiring register, and therefore of little help to me in everyday conversation, and, of course, it hasn't improved my verbal skills at all. My ear, through repeated bombardment, has gotten marginally better, and if I think and speak slowly enough, I can eventually--to the patience-testing chagrin of my listener--articulate my thoughts back thereto. But what I really need, at this point, is regular conversation on a wider range of topics, so the conversation swap was a welcome test of my skills.

So the theme of the week and, I fear, for the rest of my time here, has been and will be forced productivity. We'll see how long I can keep that up. Til next time -

On Cultural Integration

I came to Bulgaria two months ago for several complimentary purposes. The more visible of my two primary ones has been my research. But maybe, just maybe, the more important one is the one I fulfill just by living here. I say "fulfill" as if it's already a fait accompli. It's not, of course. Not by a long shot. I'm talking about cultural integration; the process of submerging myself within an alien society and adapting to it to the point where I can hide any obvious markers of my identity as an outsider.

Having only been here for two months, it hasn't happened yet. Nor did I expect it to have by now: These things take a long time, and perhaps one of the providential reasons that my stay is for an entire year is to give me the time to make it happen. It's not as though the Fulbright Educational Exchange was designed for the purpose of carrying out research and nothing else; the promotion of "cross-cultural understanding" was one of the expressly stated goals of the program right from its inception.

If you're not careful, it almost seems self-evident: You drop someone into a culture for a long enough period of time, and they will adapt to their surroundings and be transformed automatically through subconscious processes they are not even programmed to notice. Except that it's not that simple. Surely, given enough time, one can make these changes. But there's no guarantee it will happen. Motivation plays a huge role.

The discovery of the principle that motivation is a key component of language acquisition was a big triumph for the field of psycholinguistics. As the theory goes, instrumental motivation--present in people who acquire a language for a specific purpose, usually business or education--is a far inferior driver of acquisition than integrative motivation, which can typically only happen when one lives in a society that speaks a different language. Having lived this theory for a few months, I can attest to its verity. But the principle extends far beyond the realm of language.

It is evident in the customs, habits, and lifestyle one adopts upon taking up residence in a place far removed from one's home. The degree to which they pick up these things--which, among others, form the basis of culture--depends, to a great extent, upon their desire to integrate into that culture. These are the things that enable them to interact more freely and openly with the people around them, and they are some of the same markers of identity I mentioned earlier.

So how does one go about integrating into another culture? How does someone graft a new identity into themself? Forgive my linguistocentric bent here, but I'd like to start back, if I may, with language. Although I have learned to avoid superlatives, I will dare to say that learning and internalizing a society's language is probably the most important step in the process. If the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is to be believed, the language that a society uses actually determines how that society views the world, and thus, how its people act. Gaining fluent use of its language is obviously a tremendously important step, then.

There are, however, other things to consider. How much time one spends interacting with people. The kinds of things they do when they're alone. The cultural inputs they receive. All of these contribute to the integration of a person into a strange society.

I had a moment, a few nights ago, when I went to my local gym and signed up for a membership. I went upstairs to the weight room and began my routine. (Never mind that it had been many moons since the last time) And as I worked, I noticed other people around me, all presumably Bulgarian, doing the same things I was, paying me no attention. Without any obvious markers of my identity on display, I was, to them, just another guy from this part of Sofia, at the gym on a Tuesday night, just as all of them were. It was cool.

And it was a moment of feeling a very small amount of accomplishment of my purpose here. Yes, I am here to study. I could do that in a whole host of places, including my native country. But I am here, 10 time zones ahead of my home, in a place that was, until 20 years ago, an important member of the Eastern Bloc, because I have other purposes besides this one.

This purpose has not yet been fulfilled, and living here has not always been easy; for all that I've tried to do, I remain an outsider. Since I've been here, I have, at times, felt lost, embarrassed, awkward, scrutinized, and even, once or twice, mistreated. A large share of the experiences that caused these feelings have been due to my as-yet incomplete command of the language here, and others have been due to other things having to do with who I am and where I come from. But the only thing I can do is to try to live among this culture every day, interacting with its people as much and as conscientiously as possible. And yes, learning the language will be a big step in making this happen.

My friend Mark was here for two days, and we had a great time. I showed him around the city, we went out to a couple of nice restaurants, we drank some local beer, and I gathered a few people on his last night in town. The multiculturalism of the group was, if not astounding, then some less intense adjective expressing the same seniment - we had four native languages between us (those being English, German, Serbian, and Bulgarian). But we spent our time, with a few exceptions, speaking English, simply because it was the only language we all had in common.

This night was an exception, though. When I've been in a group setting here, it has typically been with Bulgarians or with a mix of Bulgarians and other Americans. And what I've envisioned as the ultimate marker of accomplishment of my purpose is being in these settings and speaking Bulgarian. To me, that would be the tell that I'd successfully integrated into this foreign culture.

I've found myself thinking about this scenario and wanting it quite a lot. And so, my task is clear for the next eight months. It's time to start making it happen.

Problems of Research and Personal Stuff

Today is the Feast of St. Sofia, which meant that the streets were filled today with revelers and citizens of this namesake city.

Today also marks the end of my first "business" week - of research, learning, and establishing myself here. It has been a success, more or less, but it hasn't been 100% vanilla. My research is off to a good start but I may have to revise my methodology and tweak my hypotheses.

Not previously knowing much about this field, I had assumed that it would be as easy as establishing its history, examining records, comparing them with what we know now, and drawing conclusions therefrom. I've realized it's not going to be as simple as that.

The first problem is that there are no written records establishing a history of the Shopi before a certain (very recent, historically speaking) point. This is Big Problem Number 1. All of the history of this people had, until that recent point, been handed down orally, which introduced some problems that go along with exclusively-oral traditions. Thus, there is probably no way of knowing the origins of the Shopi (Are they Bulgars? Thracians? Slavs? Something else entirely?) or their diaphonic singing or certain important specific pieces of information, such as when Christianity was introduced to them.

Perhaps a more daunting problem, which I only encountered yesterday, lies in the fact that nobody can actually seem to define who the Shopi are. By that, I don't mean the question of their origins (see above), but the rather more essential question of exactly who this group encompasses. There is no consensus definition for who is and isn't a Shop, and there seems to be a lack of definitive markers--cultural and ethnic alike--that define the extent of this people. This is Big Problem Number 2.

I have, however, uncovered quite a lot of valuable and essential information. One of my most important discoveries so far has been the connection between religion, custom/ritual, and song. Fairly obvious/self-evident, no? But, of course, it takes me a while to put things together sometimes.

Prof. Naidenova writes about this connection in her book, so it was gratifying for me to see another source discuss, expand upon it, and give examples. The source in question is Martha Forsyth's book, which I have spent the better part of the week examining, about Bistritsa, a small village south of Sofia. In the book, she explains that during the Socialist era, when religious practices were suppressed, the customs that went along with these practices were suspended, and the singing of many songs along with them. When religious freedom was reinstated in 1990 (coinciding with the fall of Socialism), certain practices were resumed, but since many of the songs hadn't been committed to writing, there was often widespread disagreement over words and melodies. (This particular anecdote also seems to substantiate the claim that, out of all the forces at work in Bulgaria over the centuries, Socialism had the biggest effect.)

So, how to go about attacking the questions I laid out in my research proposal? It was clear I had to find different methods. After thinking about it, I came up with this: 

With the knowledge that different villages within the Shopluk have slightly different musical repertoires, comparative analysis seems like a good way to go.  So I now have a tentative plan to compare the bodies of music sung in villages from different regions. Once I establish a history for each of these regions, the influences should become fairly obvious, and voilà - I will hopefully have established a backdoor method for answering my questions.

One thing you should know about me: I love Linguistics. I'm fascinated it. Thus, I had an idea that draws on principles from the field. One of these principles (which I heard many, many times during my course at USC) states that "People who talk to each other tend to talk like each other." (The credit for this accurate and succinct summation of one of the very basic tenets of Linguistics belongs to Prof. Ed Finegan of USC - smart, smart man.) It therefore stands to reason that the same mechanism that drives this linguistic phenomenon should do exactly the same thing on a musical level: Where the region divides into linguistic areas, I would bet nearly anything that it divides into musical areas (based on the conventions in this type of singing) along the exact same lines.

And, though this may constitute a trial of my luck, I could possibly go one step further. Many, if not most, songs are common to several villages within the region, and I would bet that some of the details of these songs have diverged from each other in their separate versions over time, much like daughter languages from a parent language. Perhaps--though I have not yet done any research that would bear this out--it may be possible to reconstruct the "parent" versions of these songs, compare them to the "daughter" versions, and glean even more information that way.

This coming week, I will begin this line of attack, and should the need arise, I will modify my methodology and hypotheses again, following the Scientific Method that they taught us all the way back in 8th grade.

/End research-talk

Other highlights of the week include: My Phillies clinching their fifth straight playoff berth (I will probably do an entire post devoted to the Great Franchise and their Season in the next week or so), continuing Bulgarian lessons with Dr. Angelov, and last night, a FISI reunion party, which was, to be quite painfully honest, a tremendous amount of fun.

L - R: Greg, Xristo, Irena, Atanas

How cute

L - R: Greg, Fred, Dimitra

Greg knows something you don't know

L - R: Xristo, Irena, the Author, Greg, Sanya

One sobering thing - 

My great-great-uncle Morty passed away this week,  just shy of his 99th birthday. He was the last surviving sibling of my great-grandfather Harry, and the only reason we ever found Harry's grave, 80 years after he died. Morty was a veteran of World War II, and got his ear shot off in Italy. He was the toughest guy, refusing care to the very end, always insisting that nobody go out of their way for him, or help him at all. And though he didn't want to be honored or even memorialized in any way, I can't help but give him this tiny tribute. I only met him twice, and he wasn't particularly close to any branch of the family that I'm familiar with, but he was truly a great man. May his memory be a blessing.

Next entry: More on life in Sofia.

Feelings and an Academic Discussion

The light is changing.

I stepped out of my apartment yesterday afternoon and it hit me. This happens to me every Fall. There is a singular feeling, impossible to describe, that I get on a certain day in September every year when Fall makes the first hints of its presence felt. I used not to be able to figure out what triggered it, but I felt it nonetheless.

There's a certain intangible smell in the air that reminds me of apple cider and brown leaves and wind. There's the subtle suggestion of a chill - the air remains warm, but there is the tiniest wisp of something hiding behind it, something that makes the air feel impalpably heavier. Overnight, there's a change in the light of the late afternoon. It is somehow older, feebler; it slants in a way that the light of summer just doesn't.

I sensed all of these yesterday, and, I'll admit, it surprised me. I should have expected it; the climate here (which I would presume is responsible for all these overnight changes) is not all that different from that of Pennsylvania, and, albeit less similarly, LA. I don't know why they took me by such surprise. Perhaps because they take me by surprise every year - nine intervening months can make you forget the feeling of a season, even though you experience it year after year.

I recall having a similar collection of feelings and reactions on That Day the first year I went away to college, in the Fall of 2006. It startled me that year, because I had assumed--and who could blame me? LA had, up to that point, been a summer-at-the-beach-like pseudo-paradise--that I had left the milieu of what I had come to think of as "Autumn in the Country" behind me when I left the East Coast. But the same feelings took hold of me That Day in 2006--only much more forcefully--as the ones that did so yesterday.

And so I'm forced to conclude that this feeling that has gone along with the changing of the seasons may come back, year after perpetually surprising year, no matter where in the world I find myself. In a way, the change is comforting, but, to a greater extent, it's inexplicably disquieting. It raises a certain feeling within me that, as you can probably tell by the difficulty I'm having in describing it, is not so clear-cut. It isn't overtly positive or negative, and it doesn't really have a name. I suppose it isn't quite homesickness, though the feeling does remind me of home; homesickness presupposes loneliness.

But I don't feel lonely here, nor did I by the time That Day came around my first year in college, or in any subsequent year. But the feeling came around all the same. I really don't know quite what to call it. Perhaps the most suitable option is that amorphous, ill-defined boondoggle of a word, nostalgia.

Leaving that for now:

I had my first meeting with my adviser, Dr. Goritza Naidenova, on Thursday, and it gave me a wealth of ideas about how to start my research. If you're interested in the academic summary that follows, read on. If not, feel free to skip the last paragraph.

Essentially, what I learned boils down to this:

The origins of the diaphonic chant of the Shopi, the type of music I will be studying, are untraceable; we simply have no way of uncovering them. This type of music is very likely hundreds of years old, dating back to the early Ottoman Period (1396-1878), or even before. As with all folk music, it serves a purpose and has a function as a part of the Shop culture. The original purpose of it remains unclear. 

The Ottomans, when compared to all of the other influences wrought upon Bulgarian culture, probably had the least influence upon it.

However this music came into being, it was unwritten, at first. A few lyrics were recorded at certain points, but up until the 19th century, there was no practical or established system for recording its pitches and rhythms. During the Bulgarian Revival (1762-1878), folk music took on enhanced meaning as one of the symbols of an independent culture and a renewed national identity. But as Bulgaria urbanized, and the emphasis in cultural life shifted to the city, the purpose and function of folk music changed as village culture did overall.

The 1850's saw the first attempts at transcribing folk music, but there were significant obstacles to this. Many of the common rhythmic gambits were nearly impossible to render accurately, and to make matters worse, scholars could not agree on the best way notate it. Some favored modern Western notation, whereas some favored a system of neumes similar to that used to notate chant in the Orthodox Church. After the Liberation in 1878, modern Western notation was used exclusively, and transcriptions started to become more accurate.

In the 1930's and -40's, several factors that would lead to the decline in the practice and preservation of this music began to coalesce. The Shopi, who, while never fully isolated from Bulgarian society at large, fiercely maintained their own separate culture, began to integrate more fully into that society. After World War II, Bulgaria became a Socialist Republic, which drastically altered folk traditions and the attitudes thereto. However, many of the best and most accurate transcriptions and recordings of Bulgarian folk music come from this era.

Today, the diaphonic chant of the Shopi is nearly extinct as it has traditionally existed in the villages of Bulgaria, surviving primarily through the curation and performance of professional folk groups. The specific techniques used to perform this type of chant are no longer widely taught, so the younger generation lacks the skills to sing it. It can still be heard upon occasion, but it is now heard very infrequently in informal contexts.

On the role of the Church:

The scales ("intonations" or "tones") used in this music are similar to those heard in the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, but there is little, if any, connection between the two. There is little evidence of influence in either direction - any similarities are coincidental. Traditional Bulgarian folk music took shape in pagan societies prior to their adoption of Christianity. As Christianity was introduced to these cultures, it changed them, and their folk music--along with its purposes and functions--as well.

The Church in Bulgaria did not, unlike the contemporary Catholic Church in Western Europe, keep extensive records and histories through its culture's periods of mass illiteracy. Thus, most histories of Bulgaria's antiquity were actually written by outside observers, Romans and Greeks foremost among them. This leaves our understanding of Bulgarian history clouded by outsiders' biases without the benefit of a cohesive insiders' narrative to which to compare them.

On cultural homogeneity:

Bulgarians, as an ethnic group, have a long established history as a cohesive, if not homogeneous, culture. The citizens of the First Bulgarian Empire, founded in 681 AD, are universally accepted as the common ancestors of the modern Bulgarian people. Bulgaria's situation is therefore unlike those of Spain, Germany, Italy, and other countries that were founded as federations of tribes who all had their own separate languages and cultural identities. Bulgaria, vis-a-vis the other nations of the world, has a comparitavely unified culture.

There are regional variations, however. A propos to this discussion - the folk music of any given village in Bulgaria differs from that of its neighbors, sometimes subtly, sometimes wildly. It may, therefore, be necessary to design comparative analyses between villages. And, as I mentioned before, the Shopi, though never fully isolated from the rest of Bulgarian society, deliberately maintained a culture more or less distinct from that society, at least prior to 1930. This cultural isolation has almost certainly contributed to variation within the Shopi's culture.

/End academic discussion

So things continue to go well. More sentimentality will most likely be forthcoming in subsequent posts. Until next time...