80 000 Spectators at Rojen 2006

80 000 Spectators at Rojen 2006

Georgi Georgiev

The biggest national folklore festival “Rojen 2006” took place on 12th and 13th of August. This year the event coincided with two important anniversaries – 150 years Community Centres in Bulgaria and 150 years Theatre in Bulgaria. There were about 80 000 spectators and about 6000 participants. Ensembles from Japan, Australia, Poland, Hungary also took part in the performance of the Bulgarian folklore. The festival took place under the patronage of the minister of culture Stefan Danailov and the guest of honour was the President of Bulgaria Georie Parvanov, who inaugurated the event. Traditionally the music competition started with the hymn of the Rodopi Mountain with the accompaniment of the “100 Kaba (big) Bagpipes” orchestra. The fest village spread on 700 decares and the local people gave about 3000 square metres of their own meadows for free during the time of the fest. There were 3 stages where 241 ensembles and 246 individual performers competed with each other. The jury, whose chairman was academician Nikolai Kaufman, nominated the winners and the President presented them with diploma and statuette. This year’s winners are 15-years old singer Miroslav Tsankov from Polski Trumbesh, 19-years old bagpiper Stanislav Paunov from Karlovo and 4 singers from the folklore group “Nedelino” - Iuliana Aleksieva, Veselina Germanova, Iana Stoianova and Veselina Kamenova. The youngest participant was 5-years old Nikol Milevska and the oldest one was 82-years old bagpiper Atanas Ivanov. The greatest Bulgarian folklore vocalists Valia Balkanska, Hristina Luitova, Zlatina Uzunova and Mladen Koinarov took part in the concert “Starry Rojen”. The local astronomers had calculated that the song of Valia Balkanska “Izliazal e Delio Haidutin”, that flies with the “Voyager” space station is now 15 milliard kilometres away from Earth. Rojen fest became a national event in 1993 and today the fest village has a town council and a police commandant ship with about 200 policemen. The fest offers exhilarating atmosphere and the visitors can taste the traditional dishes. The event was emitted all over the world on Internet.