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The
bride and groom in front of the dowry. Bansko, Bulgaria, 1989.
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On the 22nd
October 1989 under Jivkovs communist regime, a group of young people leaves
a house of Bansko in the Pirine and forms a procession in the street. It
is preceded by four musicians : one plays clarinet, another drum, a third
one accordion, and a fourth one is preparing to sing while playing his own
accompaniment on a plucked stringed instrument. He bears on his left shoulder
an embroidered towel with obvious ritual purpose. All are dressed in the
western way (...). For anyone who knows the codes of the loacl culture,
all indicates that the procession is a wedding one (...) Nothing but very
common in those places : several marriages are celebrated on sunday, in
this perrod of the year (...). Nothing archaic neither, apparently, for
a foreign observer who would be searching for survivals of the past or traces
of an antic paganism, or supposed so. And still this alliance bretween local
lineages celebrated by a wedding will mobilize by its ceremonial semantic
richnesses and cognitive resources unknown by its actors themselves (....)
To be convinced of it, it suffices to observe the ceremony itself as a series
of events which the actors have long thought about in order to conform to
the norm or to deviate from it, with the purpose of exploiting the resources
offered by the custom or of innovating. The effective performance is thus
to be understood as the product of past transactions between actors, so
are different the perspectives in which each one is preparing to play his
part. Since the questions they ask themselves are the same questions asked
by the local authorities themselves who are in charge of these rites : the
church, the metropolite and the priests; the municipality, the mayor and
the registry officers, the master of song, music and dance with his musicians.
For all of them, the interrogation proceeds from a fundamental unique question
: how to treat by the particular perfrmance they prepare the scenario issued
from local tradition ? And since they have somze latitude to do it within
the limits of the constraints imposed by the custom and the regime, how
to use it and for what meaning ? 
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