05/18/2026
I cannot stop thinking about DARA winning Eurovision for Bulgaria with “Bangaranga.” 🇧🇬
Not only because it was a brilliant, wildly original performance, but because she is from Varna, my beautiful little beach town that most people outside Bulgaria have never heard of.
She even went to the same school I did.
As an artist, that hits differently.
DARA took something deeply Bulgarian, the Kukeri tradition of masked evil defying dancers, bells, and movement...all meant to chase away darkness, and turned it into something modern, electric, and completely her own.
The live performance itself absolutely floored me!
The dancers start behind these dramatic masks, then come together, take them down, and move through the chaos of Bangaranga.
Maybe that is not the official meaning, but to me it felt like this: we all carry things, we all hide things, and sometimes the only way through is to stop performing perfection and move anyway.
That lands even harder knowing DARA has been so open about her adult ADHD diagnosis. Her album is literally called ADHDARA.
Bulgaria had never won Eurovision before.
The country had been away from the competition for years. DARA was also not the expected winner.
And then this artist from little Varna showed up with something rooted in tradition, boldly strange, brilliantly marketed, and impossible to ignore.
And she WON!!!
There is something incredibly powerful about watching an artist from the same place you come from refuse to sand down what makes her different, and have the world celebrate her for it.
Enjoy Bangaranga!!!