“School” – a song for the first day of the new school year

As a new school year begins in Bulgaria, our musical greeting to pupils of all ages is “School”, performed by jazz singer Yıldız İbrahimova and her daughter Suna Dinçer. Tatiana Balova wrote the lyrics to the well-known melody, with a new arrangement by İbrahimova.

“School” comes from Songs for Young and Old, an album released in the early 2000s in which İbrahimova puts a fresh spin on some much-loved children’s songs. Bulgarian favourites sit alongside traditional music from elsewhere in the Balkans and songs drawn from the wider European tradition.

The album has a special place in İbrahimova’s career. As well as bringing different musical cultures together, it captures three generations of her family singing: her mother, Nevrie Alieva, İbrahimova herself and her daughter Suna Dinçer, who was just six when the album was recorded.

The musicians on Songs for Young and Old include some of Bulgaria’s leading jazz names – Hristo Yotsov, Vasil Parmakov, Dimitar Shanov, Yulian Yanushev and Hristo Andreev – alongside Turkish composers and arrangers Mustafa Erdoğan and Vedat Sakman.

Editor: Desislava Semkovska