Voices From Another Time

By JAY COCKS

Score one for mystery. Score two, in fact: one for each volume of Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares. (Or, The Mystery of the Bulgarian Voices to you, Rambo.) In 1987 the weirdest album to appear on the reliably eccentric British pop charts was the first volume of folk music recorded by this choir of two dozen Bulgarian women. Journals recorded approving, indeed awed, comments from the likes of George Harrison. The group caught on, and a record that had roughly the commercial potential of Botha: Live in the Transvaal! became a surprise hit. Released in America by Elektra/Nonesuch, the record attracted so much attention that the "Voices" went on a warmly received U.S. tour and issued the second volume, released just a month ago.

The group does nothing to hide its official name -- the Bulgarian State Radio and Television Female Vocal Choir -- but the copy on the label and jacket doesn't exactly brag about it either. Le Mystere is so much more mellifluous and -- no getting around it -- mysterious. Just like the music itself, in fact. The wonder of both Le Mystere excursions is provided by the range of the voices and the surprise of the melodies. The music sounds African, Middle European and otherworldly, like a collision around a sharp mountain turn between Peter Gabriel's score for The Last Temptation of Christ and Carl Orff's Carmina Burana.

Folk traditions of quite another, although not dissimilar, sort animate a second fluky hit, The Gipsy Kings. The record, sung in a Gypsyfied merging of Spanish and French, sold well over a million copies in Europe and interested the intrepid Elektra in a U.S. release. All members of the same family, the Gipsy Kings make up a jolly band that combines the sly funk of salsa and the brio of flamenco with some of the blowout intensity of rock. The band does have mainstream appeal. The "adult contemporary" step-uncle of MTV, VH-1, recently chose the Kings' video of their Bamboleo single for its "Pick of the Week," and the band is hardly shy around sentiment. Its version of the French original that was the basis for the shudder-inducing My Way has enough panache, never mind schmaltz, to rate a permanent slot on the juke at any local Irish bar. Right next to the Bulgarian women, more than likely.