You Asked: Part 5

What explains the Bulgarian enthusiasm for '80s hair metal bands?
Question by sonyphone

First off, thanks a million for asking this question. It really is an excellent observation and it's something I've pondered numerous times. Kyle and I actually just talked about it too but then he asked Babe, why do you think you are not chalga? and the conversation took a different turn. So, I've never been able to come up with anything even remotely resembling a decent answer. But I will try again anyway.

My initial response was to blame Bulgarians’ love for metal on the nostalgia that a certain generation of people was experiencing towards their youth. Don’t mean to go all Freudian on you, but it really made sense. You're in high-school, coming of age, you drink obscene amounts of beer, have your first sexual encounter, happen to be listening to metal at the time, end up listening to metal for the rest of your life as you associate it with a series of pleasantries that have since then remained unsurpassed. The theory, however, has several problems. Most importantly, it does not explain the cross-generational characteristics of Bulgaria's love for hair metal. Also, while the theory does suggest a plausible process of how metal would remain popular, it does not explain WHY METAL to begin with.

The more I think about, the more I believe the reason why so many Bulgarians are into metal is because the parallels between some of metal’s main traits to the innermost workings of the Bulgarian soul are uncanny. Here are three, just to name a few:

1. Metal is pessimistic.
And so are Bulgarians. Our humor is dark and it's usually sarcastic. We are bottle-half-empty kind of crowd.

2. Metal is enthralled with history.
Just like we are. It makes us PROUD. In fact, the vast majority of the reasons why we are proud to be Bulgarian are connected to events that happened centuries ago. Every non-Bulgarian who’s talked to a Bulgarian at some point in their life have heard that Orpheus, the brothers who invented the Cyrillic alphabet and, well, God himself, are all Bulgarian.

3. Metal is all about verbal aggression. Otherwise, it’s mostly harmless.
Which is something that I have noticed in Bulgarians too. We are all loud and dramatic and we have no qualms about having private arguments in public and we seriously don’t mind sticking our nose it other people’s business. But it all ends pretty much right at that. We talk a lot and we slam doors but we don’t cause much harm. We bark but do not bite.

And to make this answer even more complete, I was actually hoping my readers would help with hashing out the parallels between the spirit of metal and the spirit of Bulgaria. Who cares if it is right or wrong if it’s fun to do, right?