About us

The Forbidden Symbols Group was created at the end of 2016 by a group of amateur musicians to promote alternative music with social and public messages. We, who participated in its creation, are convinced of the necessity of such a musical project, with which we want to oppose the total cultural hegemony of imperialism in our country and the pseudo-values ​​imposed by it, such as cosmopolitanism, individualism, nihilism and mercantilism.

We oppose apathy and despair, mainstream and conformism. We want our songs to inspire people to fight for a better life and to inspire them to believe that a better world is possible.

We believe that art should reflect people's real problems, should be a corrective and a tribune. It should not be "neutral", "apolitical" and elitist. In the 30 years since the restoration of capitalism, our people have been driven to brutal oscillation as a result of the economic collapse in Bulgaria. It has also led to spiritual degradation, to which helped the so-called "mass culture", which promotes the lowest virtues as the greatest virtues, aims at animal instincts in man, contributes to the fact that the most important thing is the rapid financial enrichment (especially on the backs of others), living for the sake of carefree pleasure, the conviction that man is self-sufficient. This Freudian-hedonistic view of the development of art is merely a facade behind the moral degradation that this culture brings.

Creating the Forbidden Symbols Group, we want to oppose all these processes and to launch a new trend that will conquer all spheres of art, turn it into a weapon, with which the people will defend their interests, brutally suppressed for three decades.

In the period in which we formed our group, a campaign was launched in Bulgaria, launched by three deputies in the National Assembly forbidding the use of communist and socialist symbols. Those who reinforce the current system based on the brutal exploitation of the working people and the enslavement of our country by imperialism have tried, with a draft law, to criminalize the symbols that embody the fight against injustice and tyranny. It was another step towards the suppression of freedom in our country and we could not remain indifferent. That is why we christened our group Forbidden Symbols - in protest of this draft law.

Apart from our love for music, we are united by our sense of patriotism and love for our homeland, so all our texts so far are in Bulgarian. Although we are amateurs as musicians, we try to create author songs. We also try to give a new read to some famous songs from the past, giving them a more modern sound. The translations of some of them are entirely ours.

The creation of Forbidden Symbols is inspired by other music groups that share similar values ​​and understandings of music, such as the Italian band Banda Bassotti and the Turkish Grup Yorum.