Kaval playing, or a maiden singing ... : Folk Songs from the Vratsa Region / Comp. Kalina Todorova, Blaga Atanasova; Illus. Rosen Naydenov. - Vratsa: ET Todorov - Vratsa - 2002. - 251 p.: ill. - (Native Land Series).
The collection contains 177 folk songs from Vratsa and the Vratsa region, recorded over the course of a century (from the late 19th to the early 21st century). Some of the presented folklore examples have been published in collections and books, in local history editions, and on the pages of local and national periodicals, but a significant number are published here for the first time.
The included folk songs are divided into seven sections:
"A Great Holy Day" – calendar and ritual songs (Christmas, St. Basil’s Day, Todor’s Day, Annunciation, Lazarus Day, Easter); songs performed during Peperuda and German rituals; family ritual songs – wedding and lament songs.
The second section, titled "A Whirling Vila Has Unfurled", includes mythological and religious songs and ballads.
"Bulgarian, and forever Bulgarian" brings together historical, heroic, and hajduk songs, as well as songs about historical figures – Dimitraki Hadzhitoshev, Hristo Botev and his detachment, Georgi Komitcheto, Stoyan Voyvoda, and others.
Occupational songs are presented in the next section – "You Reap a White Harvest, Nado", where the harvest song cycle takes a central place.
Love songs and refrains, interpreting the theme of love in its many forms, make up the fifth section of the collection, titled “Two Young Lovers Fell in Love”.
The sixth section – "Mother-in-law’s Treasure" – includes family and everyday life songs and folk ballads, while the final section "Oh Nencho, Dear Nencho" features children’s and humorous folk songs.
The bibliographic section includes selected scholarly and popular science works on the folk song tradition in the Vratsa region, on various themes and plots in the songs, as well as essays on well-known performers of folk music and songs from the region.
