Valya Balkanska was born in 1942 in Lagut neighborhood situated amidst some high peaks of the Rhodope mountains. Her love for the multi-colored rugs was enriched by the songs which her mother and grandmother bequeathed her. She does not remember her father but she knows that when he was singing, the mountains were shaking. At home and at work-bee parties, she unnoticeably learned dozens of folk songs from her native place.
In 1977 Carl Sagan, the American astronomer and physicist, sent the Rhodope singer Valya Balkanska's performance of the song "Delyu Haitutin" as a message to space. Each of the two space stations - "Voyager I" and "Voyager II", had a gold-plated gramophone record, containing the voices, whispers, songs an music pieces of our planet. On their way to Ursa Minor, the stations would fly for a period of about sixty thousand years. That in fact is the highest recognition for the vocal talent of Valya Balkanska. The Rhodope woman with the beautiful voice, the descendant of the glorious Orpheus, is a pride to Bulgaria.

In 1965 she became a soloist at the "Rhodope" State Ensemble for Folk Songs and Dances - Smolyan. In the same year she won a gold medal at the First National Festival of Folk Arts in Koprivshtitsa. After she won other medals and visited a great deal of European countries.

NASA's Voyager Spacecraft and the golden music disk with some of the finest melodies of the planet Earth.