Valya Mladenova Balkanska is possibly the most famous Bulgarian Muslim folk singer alive today. I’ve been a huge fan of her songs and her spirit for years, so I figured it was about time I dedicated a blog to this incredible Muslim woman.
Born in 1942, this incredible Pomak singer from the Rhodope Mountains in Bulgaria is best known for singing the song Izlel e Delyu Haydutin (Delyo the Hajduk has Gone Out – a folk song about Bulgarian rebel leader Delyo), which she recorded in 1968 accompanied by bagpipe players Lazar Kanevski and Stephan Zahmanov. The song made it into space as part of the Voyager Golden Record selection of music included in the two Voyager spacecraft launched in 1977. Today, Valya is still going strong!
The Ultimate Voyager
Valya was born in a near the village of Arda, in Bulgaria’s Smolyan Province, and has been singing Rhodopean folk songs since her early childhood. Her repertoire of over 300 songs (!!!) has travelled with her all over her native Bulgaria and further afield.
Her 2004 album “Glas ot vechnostta” (“Voice from the Eternity”), is compilation of her best-known songs. In 2002, Valya was presented with the Stara Planina Orden (the highest Bulgarian award) and in 2005 she was honoured with her own star plate on the Bulgarian Walk of Fame in Sofia.
So… What’s a Pomak?
The Bulgarian Pomaks are Bulgarian Muslims, who come mainly (although not exclusively) from the Rhodope Mountains in the provinces of Smolyan, Kardzhali, Pazardzhik and Blagoevgrad. Pomaks speak dialects of the Bulgarian language as their mother tongue and there are also Pomaks in Greece and Turkey, who are also fluent in Greek and Turkish, respectively.
Historically the Pomaks were descendants of native Bulgarians who converted to Islam during the Ottoman rule of the Balkans. Since the early 1900s, Bulgarian Pomaks have been subjected to various forms of state-supported assimilation; forcing them to change their Turkish-Arabic names to ethnic Bulgarian ones and in some cases, convert from Islam to Eastern Orthodoxy.
Refusing to Rewrite Cultural DNA
The Bulgarian state has repeatedly tried to define the Pomaks as ancestral Bulgarians who needed to be repatriated back to the Bulgarian national domain. These attempts have been met with stiff resistance by the Pomaks, although this Muslim community lives in peace and harmony with Bulgaria’s Christians.
Thank goodness there are women like Valya who valiantly keep the Pomak traditions alive.
If you’d like to learn more about this fascinating people, there’s a short and interesting video on Pomak history here.