Orchestra “Kamchia” is waiting for Vasco the Frog to gild them

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For the Varna orchestra “Kamchiya”, a wedding raises a house, and a baptism feeds a house. But it’s good that every musician has another profession. Boris Ivanov is the leader of the band, and his wife Snezhina is his singer. The two have been singing at parties and restaurants since they were 14 years old. They are the successors of the group’s founders, Maria and Ivan, who have not been singing for years. And they are exactly on the clip of “Combine-thresher”, which has conquered Tik-Tok in the Balkans.

No one knows who dropped the atomic bomb on the web with Vasco the Frog and Tsetsa the Toad. “It’s a very ordinary song for us. We perform hundreds more times in our repertoire, why it became such a hit – I don’t know! I saw great simplicity – one sang it with a broom, and another with a vacuum cleaner! How do these things happen”, wonders Boris Ivanov. On weekdays, the head of “Kamchia” is engaged in construction work, he is at work all day and has little time to follow the musical fashions of the Balkans.

The composition has conducted something like an internal investigation – where did their vocalist Angel Pavlov find this nondescript song for a month. 20 years ago, Angel proposed it to the orchestra and “Kamchia” even shot a thematic video about it. In it, Boris Ivanov’s mother distills brandy, climbs harvesters, and the lyrical hero of the song goes on a gurbet and returns barefoot and drunk. It turned out that the song was sung at weddings and military send-offs as early as 1985.

“She was known even in Dad’s time – old musicians told me about her. It is a neighborhood piece from Varna. Our vocalist Angel listened to her as a student back in the day from his colleagues. They sang it in the neighborhood at banquets, at recruit dinners and at baptisms. Where it is called – it was taken from the street”, explains Boris Ivanov.

The result is that even with silvered hair, many residents of Varna know Angel on the street,

they call him Vasco the Frog and ask him where Tsetsa Metsata is.

“There are no such heroes as Vasco the Frog and Tsetsa the Frog. There must have been someone in some unknown orchestra who was called “The Frog” and that’s how it went. However, this created a sense of mystery in the story,” adds Boris.

The orchestra leader works in construction. His wife Snezhina Ivanova is an optician for glasses. He will soon become a professional optician. Their colleague, the piper Nedko Tsarev, is a teacher at the “Dobri Hristov” Secondary Music School in Varna. His brother Petar Ivanov – the accordionist of the orchestra, is a choreographer and is engaged in folk dances.

The vocalist for so many years – Angel Pavlov, whom everyone already calls “Vasco the Frog”,

has decided to retire from music

just at the moment when the orchestra has hundreds of invitations from taverns and restaurants in Serbia and Macedonia. The 52-year-old man wanted to do something else for a long time. “We make music for pleasure. The group looks to not miss a wedding or celebration from spring to late summer. If there are commitments in the fall – we don’t refuse them”, says Boris.

After the “detonation” of Vasco the Frog in Serbia, received many invitations and refused them all. None of the orchestra expected or wanted such fame. “It is important for us that they know us in our region – and in the Varna region they know us very well. We have hundreds of songs in our repertoire. “My wife and I have been singing in bars since we were 14 years old. It’s hundreds of songs of every style – it’s not just folk music. You can’t go to weddings and restaurants only with folk music – we play Bulgarian pop, Greek, Serbian and a little chalgichka”, clarifies Boris Ivanov.

It turns out that

Varna is not so much a maritime capital as a wedding capital.

The city continues to hold the forefront for live music across the country. At the same time, live folk music on family holidays in Plovdiv is increasingly dying out. “There are a lot of musicians, but orchestras in general have exploded. However, there are many individual musicians – for bringing out brides, for celebrations. There’s work to do! Colleagues from Plovdiv complain that live music is no longer sought after and everyone goes to DJs. There are also many DJs in Burgas, and this surprises me a lot, because Strandjata is there, and they stick to Strandja music. Varna is the biggest market for live music”, explains Boris.

The orchestra both enjoys the unexpected fame and wonders how to protect its copyright on “Vasco the Frog”. It turns out that anyone who uploads their track can earn from the video platforms, and there is nothing left for them. The song is not theirs, but the piece that could gild them is known for the way Angel Pavlov sings.

The lineup that raised its second generation

Orchestra “Kamchia” was founded in 1983. Its current lineup is the second generation. Of them, only Angel Pavlov sings now, but he is already throwing in the towel. “The orchestra was created by completely different people – by our parents. My wife is the singer Snezhina Ivanova.

We inherit the orchestra from our parents. They passed the baton to us a few years ago and we continue. At the time of the old orchestra, its engagements were always in the area of ​​the Kamchia River. If you go from Kamchia down to Dolen chiflik, Goren chiflik, Staro Oryahovo – this is the area where we work,” says the musician.


The article is in bulgaria

Tags: Orchestra Kamchia waiting Vasco Frog gild

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