The Carnival of Kukeri
Author: John Dyer
Title: "The Carnival of Kukeri"
Source: SofiaEcho
Date: 06.02.2006
Bulgaria's most charming qualities include its singular folk traditions, many of which originate neither from Byzantium, Christianity nor the Ottoman period. The Kukeri, who descended on Pernik last weekend, are one such pleasure.
Dressed in sheepskin costumes and other furs, sporting homemade monster masks, antlers, wooden swords and belts hung with loud cow bells, the Kukeri combine America’s Halloween and Latin America’s Carnaval with good old Balkan Dionysian revellry.
Title: "The Carnival of Kukeri"
Source: SofiaEcho
Date: 06.02.2006
Bulgaria's most charming qualities include its singular folk traditions, many of which originate neither from Byzantium, Christianity nor the Ottoman period. The Kukeri, who descended on Pernik last weekend, are one such pleasure.
Dressed in sheepskin costumes and other furs, sporting homemade monster masks, antlers, wooden swords and belts hung with loud cow bells, the Kukeri combine America’s Halloween and Latin America’s Carnaval with good old Balkan Dionysian revellry.
Here’s an impressionistic rundown of the scene: boys dressed up as bears with men dressed up as bear-baiting women, pulling at a chain attached to the poor bears’ snouts. Grown men gyrating their hips to jangle their bells in unison with their fellow Kukeri. Children carrying signs with the Kukeri’s hometowns - Blagoevgrad, Plovdiv, etc. Fantastic masks made of animal skulls or with tall hats resembling dunce caps, some at least a metre tall.
Those dunce caps, by the way, reminded me of the towers that Italians in Brooklyn, New York, carry around their neighbourhoods during “feasts”. They put a Madonna on top of a pillar called a “giglio” and march around with onlookers attaching dollar bills to the giglio. In Pernik, many Kukeri had what looked like giglio hats on their heads.
Every other year in Pernik, the Kukeri parade up and down the city’s main pedestrian street in January with the ostensible goal of scaring away the evil spirits for the year, making a ruckus and dancing the horo before a panel of judges who later determine who was the most fearsome among them.
But that explanation is like the way we tell children about Santa Claus before they understand Christmas’s more abstract lesson of giving. Because, for adults, the real purpose of the Kukeri is more sophisticated: it’s a sanctioned opportunity to dress up and act silly.
Many Bulgarians on Saturday, when asked if they were enjoying themselves, repeated that it was a day to forget about money, politics, the news and their problems. It was just a happy day, a day many Bulgarian folks remember fondly from their childhood.
Such abandon is the purpose of carnivals, Halloween and Guy Fawkes Day included. They are safety valves, times when people get a break from the rules and crowds give way to their penchant for irrationality. Instead of the monotony of people owning the streets and ghosts being invisible, it’s the other way around.
Some say the Kukeri come from the Thracians, who worshiped Dionysus, the god of wine whose followers drank and danced until they reached ecstasy, a state of consciousness like a carnival inside one’s head.
Regardless of its history, the Kukeri has a nationalist tinge. It’s a chance for Bulgarians to shoot off replicas of the wooden cannons that played a part in their uprising against the Ottomans, as well as to dress up like Bulgarian army officers, who for many years were off-limits for lampooning.
Not that Bulgarians had a monopoly on Saturday’s events.
A bunch of folks from County Fermanagh in Northern Ireland calling themselves “mummers” were also on the scene, dressed in remarkably Kukeri-like straw costumes. They said Ireland also celebrated a holiday where monsters paraded up and down their towns, though they usually used the day as an opportunity to collect money for charities.
The mummers had been in Bulgaria for less than a week on a mission, they said, to bring different parts of Europe together. “It’s about Eastern countries coming together with Western countries,” said John McNulty.
Standing at the far end of Pernik’s pedestrian street, under the Labour Ministry building where the clock tower is topped by two crossed hammers and a socialist-era statue of a miner, reminding one of the city’s main industry. One saw how the Kukeri really brought out the Bulgarians’ spirit.
Boys dressed in furry costumes were jumping up and down feverishly as men played on the drums and flutes. Young girls in traditional costumes danced the horo. These people were waiting to join the line and make their way into the circle where the judges and the majority of the audience would see them. Their revellry at the far end of the street was unofficial, spontaneous, real.
My friend and I made it to and from Pernik for 15 leva taxi rides, tip included. Take my advice, those of you who might have a reason to go to the city. Most of the buses for Pernik leave from the southern bus station on the road to Greece. They don’t seem to leave from the Central Bus Station. Take a cheap taxi ride instead.
We ate a restaurant in the Pernik cultural centre called Dvoreza, a socialist-style place with columns, high-ceilings and straight-backed chairs that I loved. It was filled with smoke, Bulgarian-style.
My friend and I agreed that within 20 years Sofia would be a rich town and Pernik would be a bedroom community and restaurants like Dvoreza would be cleaned up, polished and rendered hip and cool with soft lighting and a DJ. Our meal of traditional Bulgarian salads and grilled meat, including four beers, cost less than 20 leva total.
Final image: we’re relaxing, eating our filets, drinking our beers. A girl in a furry costume opens the restaurant door and walks in. The sound of bells fills the whole place, clanging away. She needs to use the bathroom. Which is funny, a mundane thing that shocks you it’s so mundane, like seeing a priest smoking before his sermon or watching a Kukeri take off his mask and take a long pull from a bottle of whiskey.
Some people don’t look up. It’s Kukeri day and the citizens of Pernik have seen it all before. Others are startled, the noise is loud and unexpected. Most, however, smile and shake their heads. It’s the day of the Kukeri, and everything’s alright.
Those dunce caps, by the way, reminded me of the towers that Italians in Brooklyn, New York, carry around their neighbourhoods during “feasts”. They put a Madonna on top of a pillar called a “giglio” and march around with onlookers attaching dollar bills to the giglio. In Pernik, many Kukeri had what looked like giglio hats on their heads.
Every other year in Pernik, the Kukeri parade up and down the city’s main pedestrian street in January with the ostensible goal of scaring away the evil spirits for the year, making a ruckus and dancing the horo before a panel of judges who later determine who was the most fearsome among them.
But that explanation is like the way we tell children about Santa Claus before they understand Christmas’s more abstract lesson of giving. Because, for adults, the real purpose of the Kukeri is more sophisticated: it’s a sanctioned opportunity to dress up and act silly.
Many Bulgarians on Saturday, when asked if they were enjoying themselves, repeated that it was a day to forget about money, politics, the news and their problems. It was just a happy day, a day many Bulgarian folks remember fondly from their childhood.
Such abandon is the purpose of carnivals, Halloween and Guy Fawkes Day included. They are safety valves, times when people get a break from the rules and crowds give way to their penchant for irrationality. Instead of the monotony of people owning the streets and ghosts being invisible, it’s the other way around.
Some say the Kukeri come from the Thracians, who worshiped Dionysus, the god of wine whose followers drank and danced until they reached ecstasy, a state of consciousness like a carnival inside one’s head.
Regardless of its history, the Kukeri has a nationalist tinge. It’s a chance for Bulgarians to shoot off replicas of the wooden cannons that played a part in their uprising against the Ottomans, as well as to dress up like Bulgarian army officers, who for many years were off-limits for lampooning.
Not that Bulgarians had a monopoly on Saturday’s events.
A bunch of folks from County Fermanagh in Northern Ireland calling themselves “mummers” were also on the scene, dressed in remarkably Kukeri-like straw costumes. They said Ireland also celebrated a holiday where monsters paraded up and down their towns, though they usually used the day as an opportunity to collect money for charities.
The mummers had been in Bulgaria for less than a week on a mission, they said, to bring different parts of Europe together. “It’s about Eastern countries coming together with Western countries,” said John McNulty.
Standing at the far end of Pernik’s pedestrian street, under the Labour Ministry building where the clock tower is topped by two crossed hammers and a socialist-era statue of a miner, reminding one of the city’s main industry. One saw how the Kukeri really brought out the Bulgarians’ spirit.
Boys dressed in furry costumes were jumping up and down feverishly as men played on the drums and flutes. Young girls in traditional costumes danced the horo. These people were waiting to join the line and make their way into the circle where the judges and the majority of the audience would see them. Their revellry at the far end of the street was unofficial, spontaneous, real.
My friend and I made it to and from Pernik for 15 leva taxi rides, tip included. Take my advice, those of you who might have a reason to go to the city. Most of the buses for Pernik leave from the southern bus station on the road to Greece. They don’t seem to leave from the Central Bus Station. Take a cheap taxi ride instead.
We ate a restaurant in the Pernik cultural centre called Dvoreza, a socialist-style place with columns, high-ceilings and straight-backed chairs that I loved. It was filled with smoke, Bulgarian-style.
My friend and I agreed that within 20 years Sofia would be a rich town and Pernik would be a bedroom community and restaurants like Dvoreza would be cleaned up, polished and rendered hip and cool with soft lighting and a DJ. Our meal of traditional Bulgarian salads and grilled meat, including four beers, cost less than 20 leva total.
Final image: we’re relaxing, eating our filets, drinking our beers. A girl in a furry costume opens the restaurant door and walks in. The sound of bells fills the whole place, clanging away. She needs to use the bathroom. Which is funny, a mundane thing that shocks you it’s so mundane, like seeing a priest smoking before his sermon or watching a Kukeri take off his mask and take a long pull from a bottle of whiskey.
Some people don’t look up. It’s Kukeri day and the citizens of Pernik have seen it all before. Others are startled, the noise is loud and unexpected. Most, however, smile and shake their heads. It’s the day of the Kukeri, and everything’s alright.
