A catchy song lifts Bulgarian hearts with the assurance that their trademark matters on a global stage.
Bangaranga to you, dear reader! If this confuses you, welcome back from your trip to Mars!
Such was the fame that washed over pop star Dara and her country Bulgaria on the night of 16–17 May when she won the Eurovision song contest with “Bangaranga,” that there is hardly anyone in Europe who hasn’t heard its unusual refrain. “Welcome to the riot!”
A riot it was indeed, especially for Bulgaria. The Balkan country, which leads all ratings for pessimism, suddenly got dosed with the hype of sunny optimism Eurovision embodies.
Dara was not enough. Other good news poured in, leaving skeptic Bulgarians speechless. 87-year-old singer Lili Ivanova filled the famed Olympia hall in Paris for a concert on 24 May, earning acclaim from international megastars like Mireille Mathieu. Rene Karabash’s novel She Who Remains was among the six books shortlisted for the International Booker Prize (another Bulgarian, Georgi Gospodinov, received it in 2023). Basketball player Alexander Vezenkov became a European champion with Olympiacos of Greece. Talented kids acquired gold in student Olympiads in philosophy and science.
Such wonders had not blessed Bulgaria since 1994 when the football team defeated Germany and finished fourth at the World Cup in the USA. After 32 years, the people of Sofia again gathered en masse downtown to give Dara a hero’s welcome. What is happening?
Dara’s success very much resembles the model of the 1994 team of dreams. Then, the band of Hristo Stoichkov and Krassimir Balakov took the discipline inherited from communism and mixed it with first-hand experience in leading European clubs, like Barcelona of Spain. Let East and West, past and present, join forces and do miracles.
Performer and songwriter Dara followed the same path. Bulgarian talent met global perfection. The winning song featured a Jamaican chant, Romanian and Greek co-composers, and Scandinavian choreography, while Dara showed typical Bulgarian soul, skill, and striving. “If an ordinary girl from Varna like me can do it,” exclaimed the winner to the cheering crowds, “then you can do it, too.”
This medley of flavors and influences helped “Bangaranga” evolve into a masterful metaphor. The song cleverly captured the spirit of today’s youth, expressed in its title, which can express joyful disorder, uproar, or mischief in Jamaican Patois. The appeal was so strong that it won over both the national juries and the general public across Europe. According to some experts, it saved Eurovision from a big scandal around the protests against Israeli participation.
So “Bangaranga” became a widespread greeting and a joke, which fit in every context. Even the serious German Chancellor Friedrich Merz started his first meeting with newly elected Bulgarian Prime Minister Rumen Radev with the magic word.
The Bangaranga effect works a bit differently in Bulgaria. It does not mean only worldwide fame and the honor of hosting the European song contest next year.
The EU country, which joined the eurozone on 1 January with the typical price shock, has just emerged from a six-year political crisis, with the big election victory of president-turned-premier Radev’s Progressive Bulgaria party. Commentators had expected a full, safe four-year-mandate and a government closely focused on domestic issues – and less on pro-European enthusiasm. Foreign observers asked whether Sofia would retreat from the European core and quietly ignore the core’s positions on issues like Ukraine or the green transition.
Fortune decided otherwise. Bulgaria is going to have a big European year. The European agenda will rule the land. This is also a great opportunity. For many months Bulgaria will live within Europe’s passions, fears, and dilemmas – and will not enjoy the luxury of a splendid isolation.
The world’s attention will help the new government concentrate, and sidestep major mistakes. Even part of the pro-European vibe from 1990s may return, despite the harsh realism of real membership, where rose dreams inevitably fade to black-and-white reality.
Here we begin to sense the moral to be drawn from Dara’s success. In the bigger European conversation, Bulgarians are neither with the skeptics nor with the enthusiasts. What they want is a mix of Bulgarian and European patriotism. Assurance that their trademark matters on a global stage. Endorsement for their own identity in the winning matrix of the West.
With a song and dance routine, a young woman has provided exactly that. If they are wise enough, politicians will follow.
Boyko Vassilev is the moderator and producer of the weekly Panorama news talk show on Bulgarian National Television.
