Kukeri in Razlog

After we returned from Egypt, my parents and I travelled to the southern Bulgarian town of Razlog to see their Kukeri festival on New Year's Day. Kukeri festivals are a Bulgarian tradition held in different towns between January 1st and Lent. Not celebrated in my region, I missed seeing any Kukeri last year, but had some idea of what to expect from other volunteers.

At the Kukeri festival in Razlog, men dressed in goat hair costumes with terrible, phallic shaped head masks, and large bells and in bearskins with a chain around their necks, tethering them to a costumed minder with a big stick. Others, and most of the women and children participants (though a few of both dressed as Kukuri and bears) wore a mix of traditional folk attire and tall cone shaped hats, often with the men in women's clothes and the women in men's and women as men, and large hats.

Each neighborhood in Razlog, a town of 14,000, had their own group of Kukeri, musicians, and dancers that paraded/danced into the town square at a set time. Children in the crowd carried sticks and bags. With the sticks, they tapped the backs of strangers, wishing them good luck in the coming year in exchange for coins. Some kukeri wandered the crowd and “captured” men for money by lifting them off the ground until they paid in coins. Seven neighborhoods participated 11-2pm, each with Kukeri, bears, costumed residents dancing the horo, and musicians.

In Bulgaria, the tradition cites Thracian festivals for fertility and harvest as its roots. It is likely a mix of  ancient Thracian festivals for fertility and harvest, influenced by pre-Lent celebrations of the Middle Ages. Many of the Kukeri practices are shared with European Mummers and other mid-winter merrymaking "revelry, unruly or forbidden behavior, under the cover of masks or disguises." The folk costumes, scary Kukeri masks, and faux fights are meant as a for parody good and evil, similar to Mummer plays in the UK. Like them, performances for money/faux begging (or occasionally real ones) are part of the tradition. 

Kukeri in Razlog, Bulgaria

         

Courir de Mardi Gras in Savoy, Louisiana, USA

The Kukeri festival in Razlog reminded me of the Courir de Mardi Gras celebrations held in Cajun towns in Louisiana. There, men dress in costumes, ride horses to the village farms to collect items for a party, then parade/ride horses with musicians in tow to village center for a day of dancing and all day celebrating. The picture above in Savoy is credited to Herb Row [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) via Wikimedia Commons].

For background on Kukeri and European Mummers this website is the best: Mumming  
For specific details on Bulgarian Kukeri, though not all of it applies to all festivals, this website had the most in English translation: Kukeri