Kukeri Games – the Bulgarian Carnival
An Archaic Masquerade Custom is Still Alive in Bulgaria
Oct 18, 2009
People usually associate Carnivals with the boisterous celebrations in Venice, Nice, Rio de Janeiro or New Orleans, where the festivities start days or weeks prior to Lent and end on Fat Tuesday, just before Ash Wednesday. The conventional wisdom is that the earliest mention of a carnival marry-making goes back to 12th century when in Italy, the Pope and noble blood Roman citizens watched a parade through the city, followed by killing and eating animals.
The origin of the word “carnival” is still disputed. Some scholars insist that it comes from the Latin term “carne levare” which means “to remove oneself from flesh or meat”. Other anthropologists link the word to “carrus navalis” – the ship cart dragging the god Apollo’s statue in the ancient Greek fertility festivals inspired by the Dionysian Games.
The Origins of the Bulgarian Kukeri Carnival
The Bulgarian Kukeri carnival, also known as Kukeri Games or Kukeri Day, is traced to the second millennium BC. It is rooted in the celebrations dedicated to Zagreus – the god of fertility, wine and joy (the Thracian equivalent of Dionysus). Those festive and wild cult celebrations took place at the beginning of the Thracian agrarian New Year – just before Lent, according to the later Christian calendar. So, the Kukeri tradition represents the philosophy of the eternal lifecycle (birth – death – rebirth), which was embodied in the Orphic mysteries.
The Modern Kukeri Games
The Kukeri carnival time varies from early January to early March depending on the traditions of the different micro-regions in Bulgaria, where the celebrations still take place. However, the idea of life-eternity and some external elements of the Kukeri masquerade custom are common.
All the participants (kukeri), for instance, are young men – bachelors or recently married, for the Kukeri games were a kind of rite of passage giving the youth useful lessons about life after marriage. Kukeri are dressed in special costumes, usually made of goat skins. An elaborately decorated head-dressed mask with horns and furs and a belt of huge bells are integral parts of the costume. Scepters, wood clubs and swords (phallic symbols of male fertility) are the other common Kukeri attributes.
At the beginning of the Kukeri Day, all the participants in the carnival gather in the center of the village and choose a leader, called a Tsar. The other characters in the masquerade are a Bride and a Groom, a Priest, a Gipsy, a Vampire. The Kukeri have a cart, in which they drive the Tsar around, a plough and a wooden pot, full of grain. So, this quite pictorial and noisy procession, led by musicians, visits all the houses in the village, where the Tsar gives blessings for health, fertility and prosperity. In each house, the host offers the Kukeri food and wine.
When their tour of houses ends, the Kukeri gather in the center of the village again and perform pantomimes symbolizing a battle with evil spirits, sexual intercourse, tillage the soil and sowing crops. Then a Kuker kills the Tsar, but the others gather above him and resurrect him. The Bride gives birth to a child and all the Kukers celebrate with hopping and dancing. The Carnival ends with a feast: all the food and wine given to the Kukers by the villagers are consumed and the cosmic order is restored.
The Kukeri Carnival in the Strandza Mountain – a Part of the Anastenaria Rite Calendar
The most archaic and authentic variant of the Kukeri tradition is still preserved in the Strandzha Mountain, Southeastern Bulgaria. It takes place precisely before Lent and there is only one man playing a Kuker. He is called a White Kuker because he does not wear a mask. Instead, his face is blackened with a mixture of straw ash and sunflower oil. His costume consists of seven animal skins symbolizing natural forces and fertility. (At the end of the Carnival Kuker throws them down around the village.) Another symbol of fertility, worn by him, is a big red wooden phallus attached to his belt of bells. Later, the White Kuker performs a ritual of plowing and inseminating the land using that phallus, but not a plough, which is another symbol of the holy Orphic incest.
Although it is not so dramatic as fire-walking, the Kukeri ritual performed in the Strandza Mountain is a part of the Anastenaria rite calendar. It represents the birth, death and rebirth of Zagreus and is aimed at achieving integrity of the cosmos. This cosmogony act precedes the victory of light over darkness, performed by Anastenaria rite as a subsequent act of paying homage to the integrity and harmony of the Universe.
Sources:
The Kouker Dancer without a Mask, by Stoyan Raichevski, Valeria Foll, Sofia, St. Kl. Ohridski University Publishing House, 1993
Bulgarian Ritual Masquerades within the Context of the European Tradition, by Milena Benovska-Sabkova, Bulgarian Ethnology, Issue 3-4/1994
Bulgarian Folk Culture at the Ethnographic and Folklore Festivals in Belgium in 1975, by Marina Cherkezova, Bulgarian Ethnology, Issue 2/1976
 |
