Music Folklore Archive Collection at the Institute of Art Studies, Bas in Sofia, Bulgaria, and Its Restoration and Digitization


Diana Danova, Maria Kumichin




We present archive collection with authentic Bulgarian musical folklore which is possession of the Institute of Art Studies, and its digitization. The Folk Music Archive of the Institute of Art Studies keeps Bulgaria's folkloric heritage, which has been collected from the end of 19th century by prominent ethnomusic¬ologists: Angel Boukoreshtliev, Konstantin Zagorov, Pavel Stefanov, Vassil Stoin, Rayna Katzarova, and others. It contains recording tapes with traditional Bulgarian folklore music, original papers (notated songs with lyrics and notated instrumental tunes), transcriptions, descriptions, copies and decodes from phonic recordings. The urgent and timely collection, restoration and preservation of rare, valuable and rapidly vanishing traditional Bulgarian culture artifacts is the long-termed process which includes recording, scanning and digitization. Processing of the collected archive needs technical description, scientific recognition and etc. and for this reason a general database is created. Creation of this database is aimed to provide better conditions for using the Folk Music Archive.