"We have fallen like a cosmic rain": how the mystery of Bulgarian voices has become a world star | The music

BIn the mid-80s, a female Bulgarian choir became an unlikely global sensation with an exciting, alien and ancient style that few outsiders could even begin to imitate. The Mystery Of The Bulgarian Voices, as they were then called, won a Grammy and is partly responsible for creating a new genre – world music -. posted in record stores. Their admirers range from Kate Bush, who had them sing three songs from her 1989 album The Sensual World to David Bowie and his wife Iman, who chose one of their songs to replace Here Comes the Bride at their wedding. .

And then there was Lisa Gerrard from experimental duo Dead Can Dance, who had emigrated to London from Australia with Brendan Perry and who had signed for 4AD, the same independent label as Bulgarian Voices. Gerrard says that Bulgarian women changed their lives at a time when the music was entirely "post-punk" for Joy Division. I have never really communicated with that very dark and very depressed side of the work that Brendan is badociated with. I was ready to give up. But when I heard the Bulgarians, it was my saving grace, because I simply loved pure joy and light: it hit you right in the belly. I do not know if I would have survived London as a singer if I had not come into contact with their work. "

Now, more than 30 years later, she sings with the latest composition of the choir, renamed the most bbad The mystery of Bulgarian voices. She appears on, and even co-writes, some of the songs from their new album BooCheeMish, their first release in two decades; Tonight, she makes her first appearance in the UK with the choir at Southbank Center London.

There will be 18 members of the choir aged 24 to 71 on the stage: the oldest, Elena Bozhkova, is the only one to have sung on these top 4AD albums. She grew up in a small Bulgarian village and her mother taught her to sing in the traditional style. In 1972, while at home and raising her children, she auditioned successfully for the public television and women's voice choir, founded in 1952. In what was then communist Bulgaria, she was " paid as a state agent "as part of the government's cultural strategy to prevent any anti-socialist influence from spreading to the country's music scene, and to create a new progressive music influenced by Bulgarian folk styles. Women were not content to sing traditional material, but sophisticated and sophisticated modern choral compositions, often inspired by village songs.

The Swiss musicologist Marcel Cellier recorded the choir and inserted it on a 1975 album which he sold under the title Mystery of Bulgarian Voices. Sales were not impressive, but more than a decade later, Peter Murphy, the singer of legendary goth Bauhaus, became fascinated by the album and persuaded 4AD to reissue it. Bozhkova's life would never be the same again.

"We were happy but not proud," she says. "We did not feel like stars, like normal people." Yet the choir now found itself in large auditoriums in Los Angeles, "or being told to sing barefoot in India … with the chef on the floor, while images of Monet or Picbado were projected on us and our voices were posing as a cosmic rain on the public. "As for their celebrities, Bush was" friendly "but Bozhkova was more excited about Bobby McFerrin:" He moved me, "she says.

When the end of communism meant that they no longer benefited from state-guaranteed wages, the choir decided to continue. And their style remained the same, using quarter-tones, drone effects, unexpected rhythms and what Bozhkova describes as "an open throat singing … which is not painful if it is studied." since childhood. If you do not know the technique, you can damage the vocal cords. "As Gerrard had learned, in the 80s. After hearing the Bulgarians, she co-wrote the strange and haunting song of The Dead of Dance, The Host of Seraphim, which she played in tour and almost destroyed my voice trying to sing like them without a proper guide.Now, after a career that earned him a Golden Globe (with Hans Zimmer) for his score for Gladiator, she finally works with the Bulgarians: " I had to cross the river in their world rather than lure it into mine.

Going around Europe together in a bad bus helped them to bond. "In Germany, the women enthusiastically tried to get into what looked like a Tudor pub because they thought it was where we were staying," says Gerrard. "Then a policeman with a huge dog came out and said it was a police station in which they were trying to get in. I love these women! "

Bozhkova said she was pleased with the collaboration and that the choir "liked the result", although Gerrard felt that the Bulgarians were initially distrusted of her. "But now, we trust each other – and how to resist the most beautiful thing I've ever heard?"

Lisa Gerrard is at QEH London Southbank tonight. BooCheeMish is out on Prophecy Productions