BOBAN I MARKO MARKOVIC ORKESTAR
GO MARKO GO! BRASS MADNESS (Piranha PIR 2121)
This time out the kings of Balkan brass show a different side of their sound. We now have jazz and funk to the fore and the gypsy swing apparent but not the dominant sound. It's the youngster's doing, and it bodes well for the future of this group to break out of their category and be recognised for their musical skill in any context. There's also a video clip that seems to be the trailer for a feature film, GUCHA, with young Marko as the star. There's many sounds present and they go out on a wild Bubumara medley. I turned the CD case over to see if there was some snappy quote I could crib for a review and there was my own praise of their last album. I was chuffed, even though I was thwarted in my attempt to find someone else's thoughts to bounce off, but suffice it to say, I think this is as good as their last outing, better perhaps. "Sina Nari" is a remake of another song. I am not good at Balkan song titles, but I can hear vocals in my head. It sets me dreaming: we are driving through Yugoslavia, isn't it? Loping and bumping along, but we don't have a flat because we are on a tractor. This is how Soviet heros travel. We are riffling through the parallax of endless furrowed fields, like a rotoscope. I am surprised to see watermelons growing. It is summer, after all. The air is still. We stop and cut faces in the melons, like at Hallowe'en, and eat the wedges we excise. A man with a trumpet is hitch-hiking. It is the young Herb Alpert. He flags us down. He is wearing a military tunic from a long time ago. The Ottoman Empire? With frogging and a big shako with a feather. He looks imposing. The musicians dance in a circle and get bigger and smaller rapidly like in a cartoon, puffing up then deflating as they exhale into their brass alter egos. How long can this sobriety last?
FANFARE CIOCARLIA
QUEENS & KINGS (Asphalt Tango ATR-1207)
After a lot of ersatz gypsy music a dose of the real thing is welcome. Fanfare Ciocarlia is the top Romanian brass band. This, their fifth album, is a tribute to their leader clarinetist Ioan Ivancea, who died last year. The band travelled all over Europe, from Bulgaria to France, to jam with gypsies of the diaspora and add many nuances to their sound. To their funky Balkan brass beat they have added flamenco guitar and Macedonian accordion, as well as the pop sensibilities of homeboys KAL. Though these sounds are quite disparate they have been part of the musical heritage of all gypsies through centuries of musical exchange and more recently cassette tapes which have brought Latin, jazz and pop touches to their sound. So this is a showcase album, reminiscent of Tito Puente's 100th album (I almost said 100th anniversary) where he recorded and toured with Johnny Pacheco, Celia Cruz, and a host of luminaries; which was good in theory but not in practice as it was 3 a.m. by the time Celia came on.) The top pop singers, Dan Armeanca and Jony Iliev show up, as do Esma Redzepova, Mitsou, Ljiljana Butler and other gypsy singers, but it's the arrangements and horn solos I find engaging. Armeanca, who has sung with the band before, kicks things off with "Kan marau la," possibly the strongest track on here. The 11-piece orchestra is in top form, having absorbed old movie tunes, Turkish pop, and all the forgotten bits of musical history from "Blue Rondo a la Turk" to the Lamabada. Here is a whole cross-section of the best gypsy sounds around, presented in a rotating roster of styles. To crown the proceedings there's a farewell march in honour of Ivancea, and then a raucous outro rip-up of "Born to be Wild!" which was apparently a hit in Sasha Baron-Cohen's BORAT film.
KOCANI ORKESTAR
ALONE AT MY WEDDING (Crammed Disc CRAW25)
It's been too long (7 years) since we heard from Kocani Orkestar, so this was a welcome arrival from Macedonia via Belgium's top-ranked world music label Crammed Disc. Kocani were all over the great ELECTRIC GYPSYLAND compilation but those were remixes. Here is the raw material from whence some of those great tracks arose, starting with "Siki, siki baba." This is the third album by them, not including their guest shot on Taraf de Haidouks' BAND OF GYPSIES: their debut disc GYPSY MAMBO is phenomenal. This one also delivers with a funky rhythm section consisting of a drummer and four tubas for the bass part! Here they are joined by guests on vocals, banjo (substituting for a lute, and sounding darn like one), clarinet, derbuk, etc, for a set of gypsy wedding music. The band has undergone a complete change of personnel since their debut, with leader Naat Veliov and his brothers gone and Ismael Saliev, on alto sax and vocals, now heading the ensemble. The liner notes describe the various quaint wedding customs: At dawn on the second day, everyone jumps in the river; the women get drunk, men paint their faces with lipstick, rip off each other's shirts and start a bonfire, etc. But the music component is what we are here for: the brass band parades through town collecting the participants and then is replaced by smaller combos, and here Kocani provides all the parts. The party builds in intensity as the album progresses. The rhythms become more complex. A truly satisfying hour of arabo-turkic-romany boogie.
BOBAN MARKOVIC ORKESTAR
THE PROMISE (Piranha CD PIR1901)
Boban prods his son, Marko, to the fore for this outing, but there is continuity and the album delivers for those needing a fix of extreme Balkan Brass. The big band turns on a dime (or maybe a zloty?) effortlessly, their melodies sustained on the air like hovering strings or respiring like a celestial organ. Europe and Asia collide at the Carpathians or thereabouts and myths as well as music are thrown skyward by this natural & cultural upheaval. These genuine Gypsy Kings slow down long enough to give us one song, a lament sung in Macedonian. The other tracks are all instrumental but there is a mournful voice in the trumpets which has a tone stretching back over the centuries to Rajasthan and the Punjab whence these migrants began their trek to our day. They also recall the primitive oboe in their phrasing and pitch and the whirlwind of brass that surrounds them recalls the might of the Ottoman army on the march before their bands were dissolved in 1839 and splintered into the little village units. But, their influences are legion. The track "Meksikanka (Mexican girl)" intrigued me as I tried to figure out what the source was. Herb Alpert? No, nothing that obvious... And the moody "Noc je (It's night)" quotes Miles Davis's "Concierto de Aranjuez" -- or is it "Elevator to the gallows"? I don't listen to much contemporary jazz since it became a lifestyle rather a musical form, but there's plenty of virtuoso playing, provoking ideas and tricky rhythmic games to get you caught up here.
VARIOUS ARTISTS
GOLDEN BRASS SUMMIT (Network)
A customs agent once stopped Buddy Hackett and pointed to his trumpet case. "Is that a musical instrument?" he asked. "Sometimes," replied Hackett.
So far I have had positive reactions to my own brass band compilation, as well as good suggestions for a better name, though I think "Horn to be Wild" is a bit over the top. But no label has taken me up and offered to issue it. The German Network label has put out their own monster double-CD set short-titled GOLDEN BRASS SUMMIT, subtitled "Fanfares en délire" and also known as 40 YEARS OF GUCA: AN ANTHOLOGY OF THE BIGGEST BRASS FESTIVAL IN THE WORLD. It's over two hours of stimulating music. This Balkan brass festival began under Tito when half the repertoire was patriotic songs of mixed ethnic derivation. These have been omitted from the compilation as Ilija Stankovic says he's had enough of them! He also points out how the "white" orchestras from Western Serbia were favored over the "black" Rroma bands from the South and East, though the latter were invariably superior musically. When the festival began in 1961, folk dusted off their ethnic costumes that had been in mothballs since the Second World War and soon the aromas of boiling cabbage, spit-roasted meat, and hot schnapps were filling the air. One of the founders of the event wrote at the time, "The trumpeters stand on stage and play for four hours, trying to outdo one another. Their trumpets glisten like golden ducats, their songs are melancholic, about the transience of beauty and the stubbornness of sorrow. The 'cocek' dance is fiery, whereas the 'kolo' flutters across the meadow like a ribbon. The audience spares neither their hands nor their feet..."
Balkan brass music has returned from the brink of extinction, largely due to this annual festival, which now has tens of thousands of attendees. The compiler went through 1500 tracks, many of them in deteriorating condition, to find the best for this compilation. It's a non-stop joy and a delight for the ears. Brass bands can get frenetic and seem like torture but this compilation balances the jiggy gypsy stuff with the melodic folk tunes and shows the love and care that went into its creation.
BOBAN MARCOVIC ORKESTAR
LIVE IN BELGRADE (Piranha PIR CD 1685 )
Struggling to be atop the gypsy playlist is Boban Markovic and his Orkestar LIVE IN BELGRADE, on the top-notch Piranha label. It's a long time since I was in Beograd and it was grim then, I can't imagine what the years of war and hardship have done to the place, though the old stone walls surely must be standing, if a bit more pitted. I remember one night in Nish, in the south of country (then cohesive Yugoslavia, under Tito), being taken to visit a local curiosity: the skull tower. I wasn't prepared for what I saw: a whole tower built of human skulls -- a legacy of a visit by the Ottoman Turks. Those Serbs and Macedonians learned how to make an impressive statement, though I'd rather they were all musical ones. The martial might of a big brass ensemble has not dimmed and they come on furiously like a horde of invaders with "do or die" on their minds. In fact, the liner notes by Frank London (himself an accomplished musician) argue that if Bill Clinton didn't play sax all these guys would be dead in the NATO bombing. Fans of Boban know he has won the Golden Trumpet at the Annual Guca festival so many times he's been excluded from competition.
Just to establish some basics, they kick off with a rousing "Hava Naguila" (the giant lizard that ate Cuba?) but quickly get to showing off their chops. Most of the selections are traditional. Boban leads the pack with his flugelhorn and occasional vocals; there are three other flugelhorns, a sax and four tenor horns (which look like supersized trumpets), a helicon for bass, and a snare drummer and bass drum. On "Ring Ring," Boban holds a long high note while the rest go oompah-doom oompah-doom and the sax wails some "call to prayer"-like descant: It's truly immense. The Serbian-gypsy fun continues with a riotous track called "Disco Dzumbus" which lives up to its name! The penultimate 11-minute melody goes through the roof. As London says, the loudest unamplified band you've heard: they don't need no steenking drum machines! Break out the slivovica and prepare to get down!
BOBAN MARKOVIC ORKESTAR
BOBAN I MARKO (Piranha CD PIR1790)
More hot stuff from the leading exponents of gypsy brass band music out of Serbia. We can't fault the musicans for their stirring martial qualities, even if the country seems to be perpetually gearing up for more war. Boban has been joined by his 15-year-old son Marko, also on flugelhorn. There is a ragged quality to the music which makes it seem hasty at times but the soloing is exceptional. Frank London's Klezmer Brass All-stars join in for one resounding tune, but the surprise pick on here is a Hindi filmi tune. This is at a third remove as it's a cover of the Bollywood Brass version of A.R. Rahman's "Mere Yaara Dildara"! This is a feast for brass music fans.
FANFARE CIOCARLIA
IAG BARI (Piranha CD1577)
If a couple of horns are hot then a dozen should be killer, right? You betcha. I have been enjoying the new gypsy brass band album from Piranha called IAG BARI by Fanfare Ciocarlia. Brass band music is one of my guilty pleasures but I didn't dig the last album from this unodecatet (if that's what you call an 11-piece band). It seemed too frenetic, or maybe it was just my frame of mind at the time I listened to it. Also I have high standards for gypsy brass, measuring everything up to the Koçani Orkestar from Macedonia. This new release from Fanfare Ciocarlia of Romania starts calmly and gives you a few minutes to prepare for the full onslaught from the Carpathian mountains. Insect and ambient sounds, fire crackling, a guitarist warming up, conversation: all subside before the first big onslaught. The title cut is driven with a relentless techno beat on a tsunami of battered brass. Another stand-out track is "Hurichestra" which is a whirlwind of soloing in one of those gypsy time signatures, like 13/8. There are a few breathers but mostly you get the Looney Tunes on speed where everyone is trying to play faster than the next guy. They reportedly reach 200 beats per minute but I can't count that fast. There are some old melodies which reminded me of Nino Rota film scores so there's a lot of latent dreamwork in these grooves. One theme, "Besh o Drom," which means "Keep on walking" was used by Rota for his score for "The Godfather" so you will immediately start humming along.
Dan Armeanca, the godfather of Oriental pop, sings on a couple of cuts. He became known as the Michael Jackson of Romanian pop but retreated from the limelight to explore jazz, reggae and folklore, as opposed to the "fakelore" gypsy music sanctioned during the Ceausescu regime. There's a guest muted trumpet player, Costel Vasilescu, adding a velvety tone to two tracks in contrast to the crisp staccato of the ensemble. These tracks leap out and hook you in. An accordion and violin ensemble appear on two further tracks and there's also an appearance by some singing Bulgarian ladies, making a well-paced album.
FANFARE CIOCARLIA
GILI GARABDI (Asphalt Tango CD ATR0605)
In this globalized music scene bands have to reinvent themselves. It's not enough to be a gypsy brass band, you have to transcend niche markets, so it's great to hear Fanfare Ciocarlia rise to the challenge and give us ska and jazz along with a resounding blast of rampaging Romanian brass for their fourth CD release. They kick off with "007" in an arrangement that (I think) was a hit for the Specials. Then the romping tubas pump it up as they go into the first version of "Alili," my pick to click from this set. Track three asks the musical question: How fast can you play the trumpet? I guess it has to do with the amount of slivovitz you consume during the performance but of course as you get faster you get sloppier, and inevitably the audience lose count as one by one they pass out. I've heard other gypsy bands, including Taraf des Haiduks, perform Ellington (& Tizol)'s standard "Caravan" & there seems more than a passing connection to their indigenous rhythms, so there may be something to the liner notes' claim that gypsy musicians who came to the US in 1864 settled in black ghettos in the South where they added their music to the local mix that eventually became jazz. However you take it, this is a great version. Johny Iliev steps in to do his ballad "Ma maren ma," then we are off again on a mad dash -- this time clarinets pursued by the pumping tubas on "Hora arabeasca." Track 7, "Golden days," sounds familiar, and so does "Lume Lume," which comes from folklore, and makes you start wondering if you were a gypsy in another life. "Moldavian mood" has another wonderful trumpet lead and chorus over a rollercoaster of a backline on all the other horns. Now you can't con me here: "Hora evreiasca" is based (uncredited) on the Pink Panther theme of Henry Mancini. The album ends with a bass-heavy remix of "Alili" which has more echo and a girl humming along. It's gimmicky but lacks the sustained force of the "straight" version. But overall this CD is a gem and another rousing set from the lads from Ciocarlia.
KOÇANI ORKESTAR
GYPSY MAMBO (Yeni Dunya Muzik 3051632, distributed by Wagram)
Hailing from Koçani, Macedonia, the Koçani Orkestar performs traditional Rroma brass band music for parties and rituals such as weddings, circumcisions and funerals. Their big break came when they were featured in the film TIME OF THE GYPSIES, and GYPSY MAMBO (on Yeni Dunya Muzik, a Turkish label) is their third recording, combining Turkish dance and pop music, as well as Serbian and Romany gypsy airs.
Traditional Macedonian brass bands -- which were founded when the large military bands were banned in the mid-nineteenth century and subsequently fragmented into smaller ensembles -- play in unison with each instrument taking a turn at improvising on the melody. This group, under the lead of trumpeter Naat Veliov, uses a Western approach with the tuba playing a bass line, baritone instruments playing chords and the melody carried by the trumpet and clarinet. Unlike most Western bands, however, this ensemble plays in 11/8 time (2+2+3+2+2), as well as 7/8 and 9/8. Try counting or clapping along for insight into the way the tunes are structured.
Koçani also adapts Turkish muslim pop music as well as other arabic styles. The title track, "Gypsy Mambo," shows Veliov's adaptation of Latin rhythms which works really well. Among the other styles represented are "techno," "Gypsy staccato," and "Oro Indi" -- a style adapted from the popular Indian filmi soundtracks. But Veliov must listen to a lot of music; among his influences I detect a touch of Cootie Williams and other stalwarts of the Duke Ellington bands.
