Raunchy Bulgarian pop-folk genre gets EU aid

Bulgaria's top promoter of the region's raunchy pop-folk music genre known as "Chalga" is set to receive some one million euros ($1.3 million) in EU funding, it emerged Tuesday, sparking an outcry among parts of the cultural establishment. Payner Media owns three pop-folk music TV channels and has promoted scores of "Chalga" singers since the notoriously sexually explicit genre's rise to fame in the 1990s after the end of communism. The music is particularly popular among young and new rich Bulgarians. "Chalga", a mixture of Turkish, Bulgarian, Arab, Greek and Balkan folk music embedded with pop elements, typically features scantily clad women singing about money, sex and gangsters. Payner features on an online finance ministry list of projects set to receive EU competitiveness funding to help it "maintain its leadership position in delivering high-quality media and music products on both the Bulgarian and the international markets." But the grant has not pleased everyone. "This is monstrous. Is this the culture that we have to show the world," theatre producer Alexander Morfov fumed, quoted by the BGNES news agency. Another theatre and cinema producer, Tedy Moskov, urged "all theatres, operas and musicians: Protest!" Bulgaria's European funds management minister Tomislav Donchev, was more positive toward Payner's project, stating on state BNR radio that "everything is correct from a formal point of view." He vowed to re-examine the criteria assessing to what extent a musical company can contribute to the competitiveness of an economy, however, which is the aim of the EU aid.