Gergana Rayzhekova – Clubs as Contemporary Alternative Media in Bulgaria

Gergana Rayzhekova – Clubs as Contemporary Alternative Media in BulgariaAbstract: The contemporary alternative music scene in Bulgaria is still an unknown field of research especially when it comes to the need for systematization, classification, periodization, conceptualization and theorization of the processes, activities and phenomena connected to clubs in Bulgaria. The subject is very up-to-date in the current situation where due to the disappearing of influential music media, lack of concert halls and cheap recording studios, clubs have taken up these functions doing both business and developing the music scene. In this article I am going to make a brief review of publications connected to the notions of “club culture” and “club community” as well as present some club traditions and phenomena in Bulgaria. The aim is to view clubs through the science of suggestology, while focusing on the analysis and interpretations about club environment, prestige and other suggestive factors and how they influence visitors of these specific places. I will make a comparison among several larger clubs in Sofia and Plovdiv and reach a conclusion about their growing role as media and how this directly affects the current development of the alternative scene in Bulgaria. The research is based upon rich ethnographic material, which comprises of in-depth interviews, participant observation, case study and other anthropological methods.

Key words: alternative scene, clubs, club policy, club community, club suggestion, grassroots initiatives, alternative media.

Rhetoric and Communications E-journal, Issue 18, July 2015, rhetoric.bg/, journal.rhetoric.bg, ISSN 1314-4464

Read the original of the text (in Bulgarian)