I could never have done this work without my husband Dick and my son Peter. They accompanied me on my first trip to Bulgaria, and on two of my three major research trips. Dick valiantly supported my efforts at every step of the way. He chose and maintained my recording equipment, including pulling off an amazing emergency repair to my tape recorder the day before he and Peter left Bulgaria in 1981, leaving me there until the end of February. (See "Emergency in the field!") He encouraged me when my energy flagged, digitized most of my tapes and scanned my hundreds of pages of documentation. I miss him dreadfullly. Peter cheerfully came to Bulgaria when he could, and put up with me being away when that was not practical. And he has prodded and supported me in starting this blog.
My 1980-81 research trip was made possible by a grant from IREX; in 1985 I was unable to get major funding, so applied for assistance to several local organizations, including a special fund at the Folk Arts Center of New England and the New England Festival Association. In 1988 I was honored to receive a grant from the Fulbright Program.
All of the recordings presented on this blog are mine, unless indicated otherwise. Photographs were taken (and digitized) by myself and Dick unless indicated otherwise.
The maps that I am using to show where each village is are screenshots from Wikipedia—I am taking these from the Bulgarian edition because they use a nicer map than the English edition uses. Here is the basic file.