The gay ‘Gypsy’ who

became Bulgaria’s biggest

star

MUSIC - FEATURE

Azis was born in Bulgaria’s only

women’s prison – ever since then the
flamboyant musician has risen to the
top and enjoyed an endlessly taboo-
breaking career in his home country

Text Alice Nicolov

12th May 2016

“Gypsy music makes you feel things that you

wouldn’t have expected that kind of music to make
you feel. You know the saying ‘if you’ve never made
love to a Gypsy, you’ve never made love?’” Bulgaria’s
biggest musical star, Azis, is talking about his taboo-
breaking career. Today, the word “gypsy” is heard
less and less. Yet, Azis is fiercely proud of his heritage
and he refers to himself as such throughout this
interview.

His popularity has reached dizzying heights; he was

the most Googled name in Bulgaria in 2015 and the
YouTube video of his latest release ‘Habibi’ has
reached over 27 million views. Back in March the New
York Times’ put “Habibi” alongside tracks from
musical giants like David Bowie and Justin Bieber on
its list of “25 songs that tell us where music is going”.

As recently as five years ago it would’ve been unlikely

that an artist from Eastern Europe presenting a very
specific musical genre, as Azis does, would have
gained recognition from a major international
publication. But things have changed. “The publicity
around me and my song ‘Habibi’ gave me wings that
no other singer in Europe has been given,” he says.
“That’s a fact, because the only non-English speaking
performer on that list is me,” the singer states.

AZIS - Habibi / АЗИС -…

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Perhaps best known for his outrageous style, his

cross-dressing and his flamboyant persona (as well as
his hugely popular music), Azis’ story isn’t a typical
one and his path to stardom hasn’t exactly been
conventional. Why? Because he’s a Gypsy. And he’s
gay. These are two things that might not matter in
more liberal western societies today, but in a
conservative country like Bulgaria, where gay men
and people of Roma origin have traditionally been
ostracised and kept out of the limelight, Azis’ story is
pretty exceptional.

Born in 1978 as Vasil Troyanov Boyanov, the star

came into the world in trying circumstances, when his
mother gave birth to him in Bulgaria’s only women’s
prison at the foot of the Balkan mountains in Sliven,
central Bulgaria, after she was incarcerated under the
communist regime for selling imported clothes, a
crime in those days. In theory, Azis’ beginnings should
have disadvantaged him from day one.

“When I was a child, I wasn’t treated very well.

Children can be cruel. They teased me and I was
avoided because of the colour of my skin and also
because I was quite feminine,” he explains. And yet,
the star has managed, against all the odds, to come
out on top. When I put that idea to him, his answer is
surprising. “If I told you that my success was
unexpected, I’d be lying. I was just eight years old
when my teacher asked me ‘when you grow up, what
are you going to be?’ I answered ‘I’m going to be a
star’".

“If I told you that my

success was unexpected,
I’d be lying. I was just
eight years old when my
teacher asked me ‘when
you grow up, what are
you going to be?’ I
answered ‘I’m going to be
a star’" – Azis

Azis has emerged from post-communist Bulgaria’s

most popular musical genre, Chalga. It’s a blend of
Roma, Turkish and Bulgarian folk with a sprinkling of
Arabic influence all wrapped up in an oversexed
Bulgarian pop parcel. Chalga emerged in the mid-
1980s, an explosion coming out of a suppressed
subculture. Under communism, every aspect of
Bulgarian cultural life was controlled by the state. The
ruling communist party’s message was clear: with
hard work and clean living you could achieve a
workers’ paradise. Everything was state owned and
controlled rigorously. Private enterprise didn’t exist.
Radio, TV, recording companies, shops, even bars and
restaurants were all state-controlled and no
spontaneous musical creativity was allowed to
flourish without the blessing of the state because
anything not contributing towards a socialist ideal
was seen as ‘subversive’.

This included folk music, which was sanitised before

being broadcast. But people did still listen to non-state
music behind closed doors, with neighbouring Serbian
and Greek folk music trickling through along with
some Western pop. When Bulgaria left communism
behind in 1991, Bulgaria’s own form of pop-folk –
Chalga – burst onto the scene. A product of the
working classes and the disempowered, Chalga
proved immediately popular and created its own
culture. Much in the same way as grime in the UK has
been demonised for its lyrics referencing sex, drug-
dealing, violence and gang-related crime, Bulgarian
politicians and the mainstream press also condemn
Chalga as a dangerous subculture. Like all
subcultures, Chalga is seen as subversive because it
challenges the middle-class self-righteousness of
decent living that many Bulgarians espouse, but really
it’s just about the music and people turning their
backs on the prescriptions of the status quo.

Bulgaria is exactly placed between East and West. For

500 years it was part of the Ottoman Empire, leaving
Bulgaria with a rich heritage of minority ethnic groups
all with their own cultural traditions. Azis and his
music is a product of that. His most recent song
“Habibi”, meaning sweetheart in Arabic, is sexed up
Gypsy music which will sound familiar to anyone
who’s heard Turkish or Bulgarian folk music before.
The introductory riffs of the song are also reminiscent
of Spanish flamenco, itself with Arabic roots.

Azis rode on the wave of Chalga’s popularity and is

still the genre’s darling, but his upbringing also
exposed him to American pop influences. As a young
boy growing up in the immediate aftermath of
communism’s fall, the singer was able to watch and
listen to American pop. “My inspirations were
Madonna and Michael Jackson, they were the only
ones that kept me up all night,” he says. While his
music has stuck to its traditional Chalga roots, the
performance styles of those Western artists certainly
influenced the young Azis’ style. Watching Madonna,
“I imagined myself in fishnet tights and with ribbons
in my hair,” he recalls.

“My inspirations were

Share Tweet
Madonna and Michael
Jackson, they were the
only ones that kept me up
all night. I imagined
myself in fishnet tights
and with ribbons in my
hair” – Azis

The singer is just as famous for his outrageous style

as for his music. Openly gay, he’s endlessly daring
and inventive with his appearance, which has been
changing constantly ever since he arrived on the
scene over 15 years ago. “I thought up every one of
my different images. Sometimes I was fat, sometimes
I was thin, sometimes I had blue eyes, sometimes I
had dark eyes. I’ve been a woman and man. In my
life, what haven’t I been?” he says.

Visually, Chalga is extreme. Women look like

pornstars and the men masquerade as pimps and
gangsters. Until quite recently, Azis adopted some of
the more extreme Chalga styles. In every music video
and performance the singer takes on a different
persona, sometimes in sequins and stilettos as a
Chalga diva, sometimes in extreme drag, and
sometimes referencing sado-masochism.

“I live for the moment, perhaps today I feel right with

long, blonde hair, tomorrow I’ll have black hair and
after that a shaven head. Over the years I’ve never
borrowed my style from anybody,” he explains. Watch
the artist’s music videos and it’s easy to get carried
away by this hypnotising human chameleon. But close
your eyes and you’ll notice that the melodies are
complex.

“My music touches people in a very different way –

first it makes you feel sad, then it makes you explode.
It makes you jump on a table, drunk with emotion and
passion,” the singer explains. If you speak Bulgarian,
though, you’ll notice a difference between some of
the artist’s more hardcore lyrics, which have outraged
conservative Bulgarians, and more tender love songs
full of longing and romance. “My image has nothing
to do with my music. My music is tender and melting.
The images of myself that I created over the years
have ranged from wicked to soft and gentle. My
image has never dictated my music or the lyrics,” he
says.

Azis’ courage in not hiding his sexuality and

referencing gay sex and relationships has seen the
singer become an icon for queer people in Bulgaria,
perhaps to his own surprise. “At the beginning, when
I presented myself with the appearance and styling of
a woman I never thought that I was liberating so
many gay people. I never hoped that I would come to
represent the symbol of an ultimately free person in
Bulgaria!” he exclaims. Since starting his career, huge
numbers of people have written to the singer, telling
him how difficult it was for them before he arrived on
the scene he tells us. He is one of the only performing
artists across Eastern Europe to be brazenly and
unashamedly gay.

“Maybe the reason I’m here on this planet is to help

people not to be afraid to be different? To not hide
themselves away and to walk with their heads held
high,” he reflects. However, as popular as he is, Azis
has certainly had his fair share of controversy. In
2007, billboards of the artist and his partner Niki
Kitaetsa kissing shirtless were censored by then
mayor of Sofia, Boiko Borisov (now the country’s
Prime Minister), with the rest of Bulgaria following suit
shortly thereafter. The images were taken down on
the grounds that they were too graphic in nature.
These same billboards were stuck up alongside hyper-
sexed adverts featuring half-naked young women
selling cigarettes, booze, cars and even central
heating. The message? Sex sells, but only straight sex
is allowed.

“Maybe the reason I’m

here on this planet is to
help people not to be
afraid to be different? To
not hide themselves away
and to walk with their
heads held high” – Azis

In 2011, his video for “Hop” saw the artist placed

alongside an entourage of muscular young men semi-
naked in a traditional Russian banya. The tub they’re
in is labelled “Russia” and they cavort in the steam to
some pretty explicit lyrics referencing gay sex. In
2012, Azis’s video for “Mrazish” (Hate) was used by
unidentified hackers linked to Anonymous who took
over the website of Moscow’s Khamovnichesky
Courthouse when it sentenced Pussy Riot to jail time.
While it has to be said that Azis didn’t have anything
to do with the hackers’ use of his video, the lyrics of
his song, which talk about the destructive nature of
vanity and self-aggrandisement, was a clear ‘fuck you’
to the Russian authorities.

These days Azis doesn’t dress so controversially. “My

current style is probably the most acceptable to the
public – jeans, t-shirt and I’m ready, ” he explains,
acknowledging how shocking his earlier looks were to
a conservative Bulgarian public, “Before, I wore 20cm
stilettoes, dresses with open backs, tiaras…. now I
don’t need them, people have seen enough”.
Contemporary Bulgaria is very different to the one of
the early noughties when the artist first emerged –
Bulgarian youth today is far more engaged with the
outside world than before. Ten years ago, the
previously poverty stricken, ex-communist state
started to experience a flood of Western influences,
with Western stores and satellite TV with US channels
like MTV becoming available. At the same time more
and more young people have left to study abroad, and
so the new generation has had its eyes opened to
different ways of living and to different cultures. Being
gay is no longer such a huge taboo and certainly since
Azis’ advent on the scene, gay people and others who
are different aren’t so reviled by society. As Azis puts
it, “I don’t think it’s as bad now as it used to be. I
think that people who are different can be seen on the
streets of Bulgaria and they’re able to breathe a bit
more freely.”

AZIS - Hop / АЗИС - Х…

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The musical traditions of his homeland have allowed

him to create an individual musical style that he’s now
taking to New York. “These are a people who have
suffered a lot but nevertheless have the most beautiful
music in the world. Bulgarian folk music is the most
beautiful thing on this planet, you need to listen to it,”
he says. Coming from a Roma background, Azis was
already part of a subculture that refuses to
compromise its way of life to please the mainstream.
As Azis puts it, “I myself am a Gypsy and I know how
to handle my culture and the way I live my life”.

While it might be easy to look at him as an anomaly

and as someone who’s simply made shockwaves in
Bulgaria through being different, putting Azis’ life
under a microscope just highlights how he embodies
so many things that are at the forefront of society’s
thinking right now; gay rights, race issues, the New
Europe, the influence of Russia. With all of this in
mind, it’s little wonder that Azis, Bulgaria’s Gypsy
folk-pop sensation, was featured on a high-profile list
of where music is headed.

MUSIC FEATURE LONGREAD

EASTERN-EUROPE AZIS BULGARIA

RUSSIA

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