Зурни и национализъм
Zurnas and Nationalism

Summary/Abstract: In Bulgaria and on the Balkans the zurna and its music passionately love and hate each other, maybe because they have a great potential of imaginariness. Meaning symbolically “imaginary communities”, the zuma is a suitable object of studies in the relationships music-identity, music-nationalism. The past few decades have changed the music, the instrument, the functioning, but most of all they have enriched the images and symbols around the zurna tradition. Linked with tradition, the zuma in modem times has been loaded with new symbolism -as a sign of identity it refers to the image of the Turkish oppressors. Observations of works of fiction and cinema, where the zuma is a “foreign” (Turkish, Gypsy, oriental) musical instrument, an attribute of the oppressors and a sign of the Turkish Yoke, confirm it. The nationalistic images of the zuma construct it as contaminating “the pure Bulgarian music” with oriental intonations although in South-Western Bulgaria, where the zurna tradition is most alive, the zuma is one of the symbols of the so-called authentic folklore of Bulgarians. The highest degree of the negative stereotypization of the zurna was marked by the so-called reviving process, during which the repressive measures of the authorities included even a ban on the zurna and the zurna music.

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