From countercultural resistance to world music craze, Balkan music captured the attention of global audiences. Balkanology, the 1991 quintessential album of Bulgarian music, highlights this moment of unbridled creativity. Seasoned musicians all over the world are still in awe of the technical abilities of the musicians in Ansambl Trakia-their complex additive rhythms, breakneck speeds, stunning improvisations, dense ornamentation, chromatic passages, and innovative modulations. Bridging folk, jazz, and rock sensibilities, Trakia’s music has set the standard for Bulgarian music until today, and its members, especially Ivo Papazov, are revered stars at home and abroad. The album reveals how Romani (Gypsy) artists resisted the state’s prohibition against Romani music and fashioned a genre that became a youth movement in Bulgaria, and then a world music phenomenon. Balkanology underscores the political, economic and social roles of music during socialism and postsocialism.

The book is part of Bloomsbury’s 33 1/3 series that focuses on significant albums, their history and their impact. Professor Silverman says, “I chose the album Balkanology because it has become a classic, because it crossed over to world music audiences and because I was able to revisit the liner notes I wrote for the album in 1991.”