There are more than 500,000 recordings at the Bulgarian National Radio Golden Fund audio archives that have preserved the sound of Bulgarian as well as European history. So, in the 21^st century we are still able to hear the voices of renowned Bulgarians, such as composer Pancho Vladigerov, painter Vladimir Dimitrov-the Master, actor Konstantin Kissimov… And also of Tsar Boris III, Leo Tolstoy, Albert Einstein, Sergey Yesenin and many more. The BNR’s Golden Fund was officially launched in 1957, but the collection of its sound archives goes back to the year when the radio was set up, 1935. According to Sylvia Emiryan, director of the BNR Archive Fund, it has preserved for posterity the voices of a host of people, declared in the years of socialism to be renegades and defectors, for example the recordings by virtuoso violinist Vasko Abadjiev and jazzman Milcho Leviev. But there are exceptions. In the 1950’s, the times of communism, the national radio was not allowed to preserve all of its audio archives. Listen to a recording by Ivan Hadjiiski, a sound engineer at the BNR for many years, talking to Silva Tihova about those times:

We formed a commission together with the head of the library of recordings, Penka Nikolova for going through the records archive – there were no tapes back then. We checked what the tapes we had received from abroad contained. All gramophone records of Nazi songs and marches, of music by Wagner which Hitler loved were destroyed; we burnt them in the basement. We destroyed many recordings back then and left but a few – Nazi marches used for radio plays.”

Were you given precise instructions what to destroy?

“The commission would listen to them. We gave the title and the contents – what is sung in a given song.”

A commission of editors or were they people sent from outside the radio?

“There were editors but also outside people were sent.”

Was the commission told what amount had to be destroyed?

“Yes, and the radio’s director had to put down his signature. We destroyed a great many recordings, some of which were very valuable.”

What year was that?

“I can’t say exactly, probably 1950, 1951. This went along parallel with the recordings, we would use a gramophone to listen to the recordings individually. That was a time when the radio was passing over from one broadcasting system to another. The system was centralized.”

Today the BNR Golden Fund has over 110,000 hours of recordings taking us back in time to events and people that created modern Bulgarian and European history. In other words, it is part of the national but also the European legacy at a time when preserving the cultural heritage of the continent is a priority for the EU. One case in point is the creation of the digital library, museum and cultural archives Europeana in which each country decides for itself what to participate with: photographs, music shows, manuscripts, books, films. And the Golden Fund’s audio collection can well take its deserved place in it. But before that can be done, thousands of hours of tape recordings have to be digitized. And that is an objective of paramount significance that faces the Bulgarian National Radio as much as it does the Bulgarian state – how to guarantee the preservation of the audio history of the 20^th century. Because tapes can so easily be destroyed by water or fire… As a matter of fact Bulgarian pop and folk music recordings made in the 1960’s have already been digitized. You can listen to them if you click on Bulgarian pop music and Bulgarian folk music.

In 80 years in 80 weeks today we took you back to the year 1950. Next time we go back to 1951 with the voice of prominent actor Krustyo Sarafov.

English: Milena Daynova