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Written in fRoots issue 253, 2004

ÖSTBLOCKET
Yes We Are A Swedish Balkan Band, You Don’t Have To Look Twice!
Östblocket ÖBL002 (2004)

BENGALO
Vir
Hot Club HCRCD 2017 (2004)

HARMONIA
Music Of Eastern Europe
Traditional Crossroads CD4313 (2003)

BALKAN HORSES BAND
Contact Part One
Aquastorm UBP 044 (2003)

It’s taken a while, but now the voluptuous attractions of the odd-numbered time signatures and improvising possibilities of Balkan and other East European music (and also the similarly liberating, and to some extent related, delights of Middle Eastern music), and the high, exciting skill involved, are proving as enticing to many musicians outside those regions as the syncopation and freedom of jazz did for their parents and grandparents’ generations.
      The music that is emerging sometimes sticks close to its traditional sources, but more often incorporates them with the musicians’ own musical perceptions to spark tangents and departures, a genetic shuffling and re-energising that seems to be evolving a wave of strong new music in Europe and beyond. And the excitement about these exotic musics involves an admiration and seeking-out of music and musicians, and can undoubtedly help break down and humanise perceptions of the rich variety of people arriving in western Europe from the east.

      Despite their album’s lumpily explicit title, eleven-piece Östblocket’s music isn’t Balkan clonery but a distinctive new mix with a strong influence of the forms, language and oompah bounce of klezmer even in the Rom and original material. Carving its own path with confidence and style, it’s snappy and excellently played, a powerful, well-recorded and varied sound from a five-piece brass section, sax, accordion, percussion and drums, with violinist and composer of much of the material Filip Runesson doubling on oud, santur and mandola. No string bass; in the style of Serbian and Macedonian brass bands the bottom end is handled by tuba and euphonium. About half the tracks are songs, featuring vocals by Sofia Berg-Böhm in Yiddish and other languages that are as impressive as is the band itself. Swedish rapper Timbuktu guests effectively, as do Bulgarian accordionist Plamen Dimitrov and a Swedish choir. Smart stuff, and in an ingeniously designed package.

      Bengalo is based in the northern Norwegian city of Trondheim, a small place but a musical hotbed, particularly for innovative new-Norwegian jazz and worldish music. Most of the band’s music, in the eastern and central European Rom tradition, including touches of Gypsy jazz, is composed by Jovan Pavlović. His accordion, with cimbalom and violin scampers over guitar and double bass, graced upon occasion by the vocals of Anne Fossen. Joining the quintet on most tracks is Hungarian cimbalist Lázló Rácz, for whose skill the band is easily a match. While in sound they could convincingly pass for a hot central/east European band should they choose to, nevertheless Bengalo, like Östblocket, are masters of their own approach, no pale imitation.

      In the USA musicians have been getting together to play the music of their or their parents’ homeland since the days of the first settlers. Harmonia is a six-piece led by accordionist Walt Mahovlich, with Ukrainian cimbalist Alexander Fedoriouk, Andrei Pidkivka also from Ukraine on sopilka, tylynka and more, and Marko Dreher of Croatian musician parentage on rich-toned violin, viola and tamburica, over Adam Good’s double bass, with the splendid lead vocals of young Slovak Beata Begeniova. All leading players in their own right in the US and back home, their musicianship and ensemble sound are impeccably sensitive. Never going for hackneyed crowd-pleasers, their interesting material, well-described in the booklet notes, comes from the repertoires and collection of the band’s members. A particular gem is Begeniova’s singing of the slow Slovak wedding song for the bride’s leaving her parents’ home, Ej, V Komori Na Ladi.

      While all these three bands are notable not only for the excellence of their playing but also for the fact that they’re not attempting to clone the music of the old country but exploring, enjoying and expanding on it, in the Balkans themselves some musicians are reaching out with traditional musical forms and instruments in other ways, and also reaching out to one another across borders and political divides.
      The Balkan Horses Band is an assemblage of roots/rock/pop/jazz musicians from across the Balkans, including Bulgarian kaval player Theodosii Spassov, Serbian band-leader and pianist Sanja Ilić, Macedonian electric guitarist Vlatko Stefanovski, Romanian panpipe player Emil Bucur and Croatian nominee for a BBC Radio 3 Award for World Music, Tamara Obrovac. Contact Part One is a recording of a 2001 concert in Plovdiv. Six of the seven tracks are written by Ilic, Spassov, Obrovac and Greek bassist Kostas Theodorou, plus one Macedonian traditional. While it was undoubtedly exciting on the night, on record it comes across mostly as a big, splashy-drumkit, full-on jazzy blow, with an excess of Obravac’s strained scatting. Better to seek out the individual works of some of those involved.

    www.ostblocket.se, www.hotclub.no, www.traditionalcrossroads.com.


© 2004 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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