where's my father when I need him?

know that friends of friends thing? You should do it now and then. Because of it I now know about Azis, a Bulgarian-Rom pop-folk singer who is also, apparently, very demonstrative about being gay.

The style of music is called chalga. I need to remember this. The wikipedia article has some knee-jerk antisoviet bullshit in it -- patently false, in that it claims that chalga was in disrepute during the Soviet era because there was no place for peasant culture in the forward-thinking socialist state. Whether or not chalga was disapproved of by the Soviets (probably that's not incorrect) it wasn't for that reason, as a hallmark of Soviet-style cultural policy was to nurture folk styles and use them for political purposes. There were official and semi-official folk schools all over the landscape, and official
and semi-official folk troupes too. If chalga was disapproved of, it wouldn't be for the peasanty part of it, but the pop part of it.