The earliest surviving sound evidence of music and musicians from Bulgaria is
on commercial gramophone records from the early XX century. Although unique
sources for ethnomusicological and historical research, these commercial
recordings are little known and almost unexplored. The proposed text sets
out to collect and describe information on the first decade of commercial
gramophone recordings in Bulgaria. The basis for the research is sound
evidence from scholarly and museum archives and private collections; music
company catalogues, labels on gramophone records, discographies; and
supporting information - texts and advertising images from newspapers,
memoirs and memoir literature as primary and secondary sources. The sought
ethnomusicological approach is achieved through a combination of different
research methods: ethnographic, historical, discographic, cultural,
anthropological. The results of the research present the role of commercial
recordings in musical and popular culture in Bulgaria in the years leading
up to the First World War, cultural life, musical history, musicing,
intercultural interactions, the cultural choices of Western and local,
Slavic and Balkan, traditional music in non-traditional modern contexts, art
music in popular contexts, and the role of professional musicians.