National Festival "Dervishi Varvara", Bulgaria (16 photos)

Thanks to a friend, I heard about a relatively new folklore festival, called "National Festival "Dervishi Varvara" 2019" in the Bulgarian village of Varvara, the region of Pazardzhik. After some online researching I decided this is a festival that I must go and attend to and take some event photographs, of course. 

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I think the word "Dervish" has a Persian origin with references to "door" and in our tradition and folklore it literally means a person who walks from door to door. So is the mission of the barbarian dervishes - to drive away evil from every house, in order to give way to good and light. Some people believe the dervishes have supernatural abilities and can perform miracles. All this is folklore, of course! But who know... :)

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So on this beautiful sunny spring day, together with my girlfriend, also photographer, we jumped in the car and drove to Varvara and the local stadium where the event was about to start already. Just let me mention that additionally my interest was amplified by the fact that characteristic of the village are the animal masks, with new ones being made each year and used only once. I heard their preparation begins in October and the specific technology is passed from father to son.

The speeches of the officials were not interesting at all to us so we went to the place where the participants were preparing for their plays.

These brass bells are very heavy, by the way. Being in the fur costume with literally tens of kilograms and having to jump and play for hours... definitely not easy at all! 

The music and noise coming out from those bells is hypnotizing...

Few minutes for the last smoke before the show!

From what I saw that day, I believe there were few hundreds of participants, Kuker(s), musicians and probably more than 20 groups who took part in it. I made hundreds of photos so to be honest it is quite hard to choose only few to present the festival to you here. Ah, I will post a URL to the full gallery on Shutterstock at the end of this article so you can enjoy all of my visual captures ;)

This is how passing the traditions begins sometimes.

Keep it up!

Here are some of the masks I picked for your entertainment ;)

Now see who's behind one of those scary things:

Wish you were there? :D

Here is the promised link to the full stock gallery, of course most of the images are available for Editorial licensing. https://www.shutterstock.com/g/LightCaptured/sets/192376727

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