ABSTRACT
The country's leading group protested a decision by officials to turn on the houselights during its act by departing from the agreed-upon program of original, Bulgarian compositions and playing a medley of Beatles and Rolling Stones classics. The clear implication was that no Bulgarian music would have adequately expressed the group's sense of outrage and defiance. Young Bulgarians seem nevertheless to attach a huge significance to this imported and barely assimilated culture, seeing it as a symbol of both modernity and youthful rebelliousness. The journal Uchitelsko delo observed that the punks were aggressive, rejecting communism with contempt and sneering at conformist Bulgarians as "idiots." The accolades for the Shturtsi and Formatsiya Studio Balkanton notwithstanding, the regime's earliest reaction to rock was hostile—and, on the whole, it remained hostile for more than two decades. The emotional impact of Bulgaria's fresh and unmediated encounter with Western rock will have a tremendous effect on the country's young for many years to come.
