Review: The Rough Guide to the Music of Balkan Gypsies

You may know the Rough Guides from their series of travel books devoted to off-the-beaten-path locales, but now they've hit on a fantastic idea that's great news for fans of world music. Through an association with the World Music Network, Rough Guides is compiling world music CDs that highlight sounds from all over the world.

The Rough Guide to the Music of Balkan Gypsies is a perfect example of the value of this project. Dan Rosenberg, who works as a journalist for the Rough Guides and Afropop Worldwide Radio has put together a fascinating collection of music made by the Roma people of the Balkans.

In general, the music of Balkan Gypsies bears certain similarities to klezmer and Greek rembetika, but the groups tend toward larger ensembles with more of an emphasis on brass instruments. Like klezmer and rembetika, the music on this CD is rooted in European traditions, but is colored by strong eastern influences. This can be attributed to the fact that the Roma people maintain cultural traditions that come from their land of origin in northern India, and to the fact that most of the Balkan peninsula was dominated by the Ottoman Empire until the end of the 19th Century.

Gypsy musicians are known for their virtuosity (for example, the Belgian Gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt), and this CD shows why. The Roma people are also often known as outcasts in the societies where they live, and so their music is at once celebratory and mournful—both a reflection of their participation in the local culture and their exclusion from it.

The first song on the CD is from Romania, where the vast majority of Balkan Gypsies live. "Mahalageasca" by Mahaka Rai Banda is a captivating instrumental that sets the stage for the CD by introducing the listener to the combination of brass, violin and accordion that is a signature of much Balkan Gypsy music.

Another Romanian group, Taraf de Haidouks, adds "Cintec de Dragoste Si Joc," an absolutely mesmerizing song that features a nimble rhythm section that forms the backdrop as a call-and-response vocal duet, violins and accordions all vie for the spotlight. The song ends with a frenzy of impassioned sawing on the violins in double-time.

A Serbian brass ensemble of some international renown, Boban Markovic Orkestar, plays "Mundo Cocek," a jazz-influenced number that could easily have been performed by Duke Ellington's orchestra.

Two outstanding songs on the CD benefit from a mixture of traditional Turkish and Gypsy music. One is by Ivo Papasov and Yuri Yunakov, who hail from eastern Bulgaria near the Greek and Turkish borders. They reunited in 2005 to record "Lenorije Chaje," a song with soaring clarinet and saxophone parts and an exotic air, for this album. Both men spent time in socialist labor camps in the 1980s for the crime of playing traditional music. The second is "Lume, Lume" by Fanfare Ciocarlia, a brass band from Moldavia who play in the tradition of 19th Century Turkish military bands. On this song they team up with the vocalists of the Bulgarian Voices to create a haunting and gorgeous pan-Balkan melody.

Article Author: Pete Blackwell

Pete Blackwell is a street walking cheetah with a heart full of napalm. He lives in St. Louis, Gateway to the West and proud home of Provel cheese.

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