Slavi Trifonov and the Commodification of Nationalism

This dissertation is a study of the cultural meanings ascribed to the postsocialist Bulgarian pop-folk musician and television personality Slavi Trifonov. Since the early 1990s, Trifonov's career and popularity have been intricately linked to the transition from communism to post-communism and the sociocultural experiences characteristic of that transformation. Based on audience reflections, my inquiry considers Trifonov and his music as a polarizing discourse that embodies the competing meanings generated by this shift in economic and political structure in Bulgaria. I insist that Trifonov's music and television productions purposefully create an image of the nation and sell that image as an inconspicuous element of popular music culture. The success of Trifonov within commercial music and as a polarizing cultural figure also suggests that the nation and its commercialization have a specific social capacity and are interconnected. I explore this interconnectedness and argue that it reveals the ways Bulgarian people experience and make sense of their conflicting social experiences through popular music.