Guardian's Folk album of the month: Sound Portraits from Bulgaria - "diverse, complex and moving by turns"

Song collector Martin Koenig made a compilation of music recorded in rural Bulgaria between 1966 and 1979. When he decided to publish it, he returned to Bulgaria in 2015 to get consent from the musician on those recordings, and to pay them - and found many of them. It's mostly instrumental music - played on kaval (a Balkan flute), violin and gaidas (Balkan bagpipes). It's not for everybody, but's it is certainly a treasure chest, so unsurprisingly Guardian chose it as their Folk album of the month.