Pop singer Teodor Shishmanov, who is one of the founders of the band "Tonika SV", loved by generations of Bulgarians, has part of his life path connected with Radio Bulgaria. In the period 1985-1988, he was part of the English section. He got into the multilingual program of the Bulgarian National Radio thanks to another fellow musician - rock legend Georgi Minchev, who at that time collaborated with the French section.

"I was an editor and the two shows I was a part of were related to my other profession. One was ‘The Top of Bulgarian Pops’ – a weekly chart for pop songs, compiled from listeners' letters. Every week there were three songs which I presented. The other show was with Georgi Minchev himself, who once a month, within an hour, presented a performer. I was his editor. I recently thought of but I could not find an old magazine for lovers of short-wave broadcasts and radio amateurs, where they had written two pages about the English section of the Bulgarian National Radio, with these two shows mentioned first. In general, they wrote that communist countries seemed to be not only engaged in propaganda, but also knew how to make entertaining shows," Teo Shishmanov looks back in time.

Among the colleagues he worked with at the time, Shishmanov remembers Todor Tokin, Genko Punkin, Lyudmila Taskova, Alexander Stoyanov, Neli Konstantinova and Yordanka Georgieva. "Many letters were received and every week there were special programs in which we answered listeners":

"There was interesting feedback about the programs. Politics was least discussed. Our listeners liked the programs about everyday life, about culture, about tourism,” Shishmanov says and remembers another curious thing from the history of the program: “We had a correspondent point of Radio Bulgaria at the sea side."

It was in one of the hotels in the Black Sea resort of Golden Sands. Our interlocutor was sent there to work soon after his wedding and he and his wife turned this period into their honeymoon. Their meeting is also a curious story. They met on a bus, but neither of them asked for a phone number. She got off at one of the stops and he thought he would never see her again, until one day the phone in the editorial office rang and it was her on the other end of theline. In confirmation of how small the world is, it turned out that the girl was a close friend of a colleague of Teo's, and that is how the lifetime connection was established.

Radio Bulgaria has played its key role in Teo Shishmanov's life and he managed to enter the memories of generations of Bulgarians with the music he created, together with the other singers from the emblematic group "Tonika SV". He defines their career in the first years after its creation in 1980 as "dizzying” and something they did not expect. This is the period when some of the most beloved hit songs of the band were created.

"Suddenly we won first and second place in ‘Melody of the Year’ competition, followed by many performances and concerts. And as usual, tension between us rose," Shishmanov recalls. After their breakup, the group reunited several more times, under different forms and names - "Tonika", "Familia Tonika".

Teo Shishmanov also released a solo album in 2001, called "Illusions". The lyrics to one of the songs was written by poet Mihail Belchev, while the music was also created by iconic musicians - Valdi Totev, Boris Yanachkov, Rumen Boyadzhiev. He is connected with the latter by a long-standing friendship and joint work:

"I recorded commercials with him, as well as several songs from my album. With him we recorded perhaps the best concert that Tonika has ever performed. This happened in 1997 in the National Theater. We released it on videotape and a few years ago with the help of Kamen Tanov – an outstanding sound engineer who worked at the Bulgarian National Radio, we restored the sound of the concert and it was immediately taken for storage in the Golden Fund of the radio."

Publication in English: Al. Markov

Photos: bnt.bg, Facebook/ Teodor Shishmanov, Facebook / Tonika SV