“Tonight you will experience Chalga,” said Vladimir Kisiev, as we walked sedately towards the centre of Smolyan.
“Chalga?” queried the ignorant Englishman.
“Oh yes, Chalga,” said Ivelina Metchkarova. “Something very special.”
“What is this Chalga?” enquired the still-mystified Briton.
“Music,” replied Georgi Shopov, with not a small degree of enthusiasm.
Miss Metchkarova and Mr. Kisiev looked at one another. “Perhaps…” they added.
Our destination that balmy August evening was Top Stars, the pulsating heart of Smolyan’s nightlife, a discotechque straight out of the Eighties with prices to match. There the local gallants and their girls donned fake Manchester United tops, jeans and short skirts and danced the night away to a strange mixture of Western pop and this aforementioned Chalga.
“It’s terrible isn’t it?” asked Ivelina, several double vodkas later. The song playing at that particular moment was a fast-moving gypsy melody with what sounded like some Greek influences. The lyrics were all in Bulgarian barring the chorus which was English and consisted of ?Sexy! Sexy! Sexy!’ It was undoubtedly one of the cheesiest tracks that I’d ever heard in my life.
“Actually, I rather like it,” was my reply. Ivelina sighed in exasperation. So did Vladimir. Georgi Shopov however, beamed.
And so went my introduction to Chalga.
Of course, Chalga was something that even if I had never visited the palatial confines of Smolyan’s Top Stars, I was always going to encounter. No visitor to Bulgaria can escape it. Wherever one goes, it’s there, blaring from the taxi radio, deafening customers in the coffee shop, lulling early morning bus commuters into a troubled sleep, blasting out of classroom windows at break times and of course filling the disco dancefloors. No one who has been anywhere near Bulgaria is unfamiliar with this phenomenon. Whether they like it or not is another matter entirely. But the question that should first be asked of course, is what is Chalga?