10 Influential Albums #7: Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares

My path to this album begins with Stravinsky’s Les Noces., a masterpiece that’s not part of this list but really should be because it blew my mind when I first heard it, even more than The Rite of Spring. I loved the recordings I had of it, but something was missing, something off. Then I heard this record and it was obvious — Stravinsky’s Russian peasant wedding music required folk voices — and years later, the Petrovsky Ensemble recorded a version of Les Noces with precisely the vocal idiom it demanded.

But that does a disservice to the craft behind Le Mystere. These are folk singers the way a Lamborghini is a car. These are excellent musicians who can wring every last drop of wrenching pathos from a perfectly tuned and timed suspension. The arrangements — sometimes tender, sometimes harsh, filled with major seconds, whoops, screams, and noises — are carefully made works of art. It sounds like folk music, and it is. And it’s also not folk music, it’s an elite art, flipping back and forth like one of those optical illusions.

For The Origin, I wanted a special, unique sound for Darwin’s autobiographical words. I contacted Shira Cion of Kitka, an American female vocal group that specializes in Balkan music. In fact, Kitka members studied with the women of Le Mystere. I used similar techniques for the main theme of Tulennielijä (Fire-Eater), Pirjo Honkasalo’s film about two sisters in a circus. And as much I love opera singing, chant, and many other vocal styles, it is my hope that I get a chance soon to write more for this amazing sound.