Zhivka Shopova: Writing lyrics on a finished music score is my cup of tea!

 Zhivka Shopova is a poetess, author of lyrics of pop and jazz songs which she creates on ready melodies and she is among the best in Bulgaria. She works with a range of composers, but most often with her husband - Konstantin Tsekov member of the celebrity Free Sailing Band (FSB). The songs in this feature are the product of this brilliant creative partnership.

Here is an English translation of a fragment from the lyrics of this song:

A girl with a colorful scarf and coral plaits

Looked into the endless ocean

A girl stopped at the sunset

And she picked two tears from the sunset.

Ocean is part of the project FSB for Others produced by the Bulgarian National Radio which will be released very soon. The songs in it are composed by Konstantin Tsekov with lyrics by Zhivka Shopova.

What I wanted to tell you

The thirsty water secretly whispered

I crossed the threshold, took my bags

The world's contours blurred

The night is insatiable for tenderness.

Zhivka Shopova has published several verse volumes and the BNR Archives keep many recordings of radio plays for children with her participation. She was member of the Peite s Nas (Sing with us) quintet founded and led by her father Mihail Shopov, a famous composer of children's songs. Does she have favorites among her lyrics?

„I usually love the latest I have written but it soon goes beyond my back. I am always thrilled by what is ahead. Being an adventurous type, I never stop for long. I am always brimming with new ideas and they are often made into reality by many people that are around me. With time I have come to know that one has to work with a team they trust and with whom they have creative harmony. I dislike the negativism that has swept our world today. I stake on optimism. I am grateful that I have grown up in an artistic family. There is hardly anything more important than the family. I am really very proud of my father. He influenced me. He gave me a stable background in childhood and this spelled plenty of opportunity later in life. My cup of tea is to write lyrics on a finished music score.”

At dawn under the rain

The two of us strode

In roses of mist and we were happy too

In roses of mist I shall love you

„I am always emotional when I come to visit the Bulgarian National Radio”, Zhivka goes on to say. “My childhood is linked to it. In the early 1960s a competition was announced for young actors for the children's radio theater. I joined it and I was selected. I am grateful to Slavka Matova, chief stage-director of the children's radio theater. We were recording plays every day and there were veritable pearls among them. I took part in recordings with the vocal group Sing with us too. We were five girls - I have great memories from that time. This was in practice Bulgaria's first vocal group for pop songs. My father was obviously aware of the need to have such a group and he wrote very nice songs for it that people enjoy even today. Everything I have done is of great help to me when writing lyrics. I usually capture a momentary mood, a momentary yearning for something remote. Composers never give me instructions about the lyrics. They just say, “Do it as you feel it”. I can remember that when I was writing the lyrics for The Other (one of the hits in the repertoire of Vassil Petrov) my husband was on a tour with FSB and I probably missed him. I was looking for an original solution and the idea about the other came to me:

I am the other

I am not lonesome

I fill all my days with you

Zhivka Shopova has written plenty of lyrics for children's songs performed by the BonBon vocal group. She says this is the best Bulgarian children's vocal group. It has a diverse repertoire and arrangements are professional. Her favorite song is Ovtsa (Sheep), music by Boris Chakarov.

They call me a sheep

They say I am ignorant

My asset is my yarn

 

                                                                                                                             English Daniela Konstantinova

Audio file features the following songs on lyrics by Zhivka Shopova

1. Okean (Ocean), music by Konstantin Tsekov, performed by LaTiDa vocal group

2. Za nezhnost (For Tenderness), music by Konstantin Tsekov, performed by Lubo Kirov

3. V Rozi ot Magla (In Roses from Mist), music by Konstantin Tsekov, performed by Dessy Dobreva and Lubo Kirov

4. Drugiyat (The Other), music by Konstantin Tsekov, performed by Vassil Petrov

5. Ovtsa (Sheep), music by Boris Chakarov, performed by BonBon vocal group

6. Srednoshten Tsirk (Midnight Circus), music by Konstantin Tsekov  

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