Son histoire
Vasil hails from the Rhodope Mountains of Northern Greece, though ethnically, he is a Bulgarian Pomak.* He came to America in 1971 and found work deep-mining across the anthracite belt. Today he is known as the greatest rhodopska gaida player outside of Europe and has recorded with the likes of Valya Balkanska. He claims that as a young man, he recorded a song onto a golden disk that was shot into deep space orbit by the Bulgarian Communist Government in 1961. Last year on his name day, he gave me a bottle of homemade fig brandy that blinded me for three days.
*His contract stipulates that I must clarify he is NOT ethnically Greek.
Ribbonette Records 