POPULAR CULTURE AND PANDEMIC POLITICS: Musically mitigating COVID-19 in 2020 Bulgaria

This chapter illustrates the COVID-19 pandemic’s immediate economic and cultural impact on popular music in Bulgaria, the EU’s least vaccinated state, where the author has conducted ethnomusicological fieldwork since 1988. Almost immediately after the pandemic erupted, sonic responses to the virus and quarantine life appeared on social media. These included newly composed traditional songs and choral arrangements by amateur and professional artists, and lighthearted music videos drawing upon diverse popular culture genres. These new works railed against lockdowns, poked fun at the virus and its contagious nature, and sought to impart musical immunity. Notably, several also drew upon spiritual resources, both Christian and animist, to effect social change and restore health. Among the most vivid mystical responses was the marshalling of public bellscapes - Orthodox churchbells and seasonal, ritual mumming bells - to acknowledge the heroic contributions of medical personnel, cleanse the environment of viral activity, and promote healing. The chapter addresses these phenomena as a form of social and cosmological activism directed simultaneously at alleviating the pandemic, critiquing its politics, and confronting other sociopolitical maladies with which the contagion has intersected.