Yoana Tosheva 8 posts
Yoana Tosheva is an artist, a writer, and an immigrant. She graduated from Loyola University Chicago with a BA in English and Art History. Her poetry and essays have been published in Sixty Inches From Center, West Trade Review, Sunlight Press, Red Fez, Constellate Literary Journal and elsewhere. When she is not writing or painting, you can find her in the pit at a show, reading a book, starting another project she likely won't have time to finish, or oversharing. Yoana is most interested in the collective and personal archival nature of music, making this the focus of much of her work.

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Constructing a ‘Record’: On Ma délire: Songs of love, lost and found

One of the most distinctly human tendencies might be the cataloging of things: making lists, records, organizing them by shape, color, alphabetical order. For as long as I can personally remember, I have been obsessed with collecting and keeping artifacts from places I’ve been: movie tickets, plane tickets, museum tickets.… read more.

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The Gift of the Sample (A Meditation on Bulgarian Folk)

Do you know the feeling of smelling something that immediately transports you back to a specific moment or space from your childhood? The air shifts and suddenly you are five, seven, nine years old again, feeling simultaneously comforted and also discombobulated. This, to me, is akin to the feeling of recognizing a sample in a song, particularly when the sample is a Bulgarian folk melody.… read more.

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‘Pussy Gillette’ and Inconspicuous Affirmations

With every year that passes, I always circle around to a couple of the same realizations and conclusions.

The first is that linear time is a scam (more on this some other time), the second is what an idiot I had been the year before (someone’s God, give me mercy), and the third is the sneaking anxiety and inkling that I am in a race against time (even though the idea of constant progression is false, I believe).… read more.

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Moving Through Grief with Rat Tally’s ‘In My Car’

In My Car is an album that documents the movement and geography of loneliness and grief that follow you around, regardless of where you are. There is a lingering reflection in each song, a testament to the inevitable, symbiotic relationship that transpires when you haunt a place and when that place haunts you back.… read more.

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Not Dead and Certainly Not Pretending: L7’s Anniversary Tour

At a time when so many bands are getting back together or touring old material for what seems like nostalgia checks, L7 is doing what they’ve always done: putting on a good show for the sake of the music. Nothing more, nothing less.

FF2 guest post by Yoana Tosheva

My introduction to the band was through Mark Lanegan’s memoir, Sing Backwards and Weep.… read more.

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Echoes from Home: Bulgarian State Television Female Vocal Choir

Growing up Bulgarian, folk music was inescapable. Every family party, festive gathering, national holiday, or visit with my grandparents involved hearing folk music at some point. As a kid, I never could appreciate the sound. Something about the mundane nature of the lyrical content and the strain of the bagpipe bored and annoyed me.… read more.

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