Romano Drom
Romano
Drom reflects as well the tradition and the modernity of the oláh gipsy
music. The power of their traditional music is in the voices and vocal games
but also the use of romani language as their mother tongue. The basic olah gipsy
songs are arranged by Antal Kovács who also composes new songs, mostly
based on traditional melodies, and lived experiences. Romano Drom's music is
characterized for its masculine energy and sincerity and it is probably the
only group who has succeeded in integrating a powerful instrumentation, which
gives us a sound colour never reached in this music before. Guitars, percussions,
accordion, violin, and double bass groove together...until we have the feeling
this music was always part of us.
Romano
Drom means "gypsy road" in romani language, dissidents of the group
Ando Drom, their first album "Déta Dévla" was released
in Hungary in 1999. The second album "Ando Foro" (In the city) came
out in November 2001 on the French Label daqui and is distributed by Harmonia
Mundi. Their last album "Ande Lindri" (In Dream) came out in october
2003 on the same Label, and the group is actually preparing a new one coming
out in the fall 2006.
Romano Drom Snapshot on the musicians...
Anti (Antal Kovács Jr), Solo and rythmic guitar, voice
He started music at 10 years old in a children's group, which later became Ando
Drom. He started his carreer by dancing, then played mandolin and sang, took
over the tambura and finally the guitar. Foundator of the group with his father,
he does all the arrangments, composes words and music of Romano Drom. He uses
Tsollar, Lovar, Beash and Romanian melodies, to create an original and personnal
repertoir, influenced by his passion for spanish music, but also his interrest
for arab music and even Jazz.
Joco (József Balogh), Voice, guitar
He started playing music alone, waiting for the group that would suite him.
His meeting with Anti is the result of a dream, and the beguinning of a warmth
collaboration
www.romanodrom.com
BENGAS
DŽA
music (DŽA means go)
BENGAS
goes with the Romany-music of the whole world.
The
group formed in autumn 2001 in Prague Instrumental cast of BENGAS consist from
four spanish half accustic guitars, bassguitars, percus instruments and drummersDuring
last 6 years BENGAS performed in many hall in Prague, in Bohemia, Moravia even
in abroad.
Milan
Migel Horvát - acc. guitar, song
Robert Marcín - acc. guitar, song
František Fery Cervenák - acc. guitar, song
Martin Sivák - bassguitar, song
Radek Sivák - percussion
Lucas Trojan - drums – in last years played with Undrop, Manu Chao and
perform before Oasis
The
group co-operate with the
oldest Romany-folklore dance group PERUM
in Europe and with GIPSY KINGS
www.bengas.net
BABA
ZULA
With its specifically unique sound created by melding traditional Turkish musical
instruments with electronic elements, Baba Zula has brought a brand new dimension
to Turkish Folk Music. Baba Zula's music is basically an amalgamation of recorded
natural sounds with both traditional and modern acoustic and electronic musical
instruments, a culmination of disparate electronic effects. Starting out by
improvisations, later fixed into musical elements which make up their music
such as theme, tune, style and sound, reached through recordings and rehearsals,
the group has carried this method of "defined improvisation" into
concerts, movies, theatrical plays, use of video, slides and films, prepared
by the additional members who have joined forces with the core group in its
live performances.
Levent
Akman (kasik, bendir, def, konga)
Murat
Ertel (Baglama and other strings, teremin, vocal)
Emre Onel (darbuka, sampler, vocal) .
THE
NEW YORK GYPSY ALL-STARS BAND
The young Macedonian / Turkish clarinet virtuoso Ismail Lumanovski follows up
his unforgettable performance with the Clarinet All- Stars during the NY Gypsy
Festival with another all-star session of jazz-inflected Turkish, Balkan and
Mediterranean Romani (Gypsy) songs, The All-Stars showcases some of NY's finest
musicians including Tamer Pinarbasi from Turkey on kunun, Panogiotis Andreu
from Greece on bass; Seido Salifoski from Macedonia on percussion/darbouka and
Jordan Person from Philadelphia on drums, who have performed with such world
music icons as Turkish clarinet master Husnu Senendirici, and Bulgarian masters
Ivo Popasov and Yuri Yanakov. The group is the brainchild of Serdar Ilhan, producer
of the New York Gypsy Festival, which offers a broad perspective on various
styles of Gypsy music and dance against the backdrop of New York City which,
being the crossroads of many cultures, is essentially Gypsy at heart
Ismail
Lumanovski - Clarinet (Mecadonia)
Seido
Salifoski - Darbuka (Macedonia)
Panagiotis Andreou - Bass (Greece)
Tamer Pinarbasi - Kanun (Turkey)
Jordan Pearlman - Drum (US)
BALKAN
BEAT BOX
Balkan
Beat Box is steeped with an intense lifetime of research into their own non-Western
roots as well as other cultures. A quasi-circus event, BBB performs with a core
of 6 musicians, collaborating with artists from Bulgaria, Morocco, Spain, Israel,
and Turkey who draw on a variety of styles from around the world. Every event
keeps the audience guessing what the next surprise will be.
BBB makes connections that politics often keep separate. Jewish, Gypsy, Arabic,
and American are united by hip hop beats and dancehall toasts. BBB’s musical
hitch-hiking continues as they mix things up with dub and electronics, juxtaposed
with ancient Moroccan and Mediterranean melodies. The band’s uncategorizable
sound gives equal weight to soulful acoustic timbres and digital rhythms creating
a uniquely organic sound with electronic elements.
“Gypsy is the definition of a soul, not a color or place. It’s
a take on life.” – Tamir Muskat in SPIN, Jan. 2007
“A
magnificent mash-up melding music from every conceivable corner of the globe
and its history." – Chicago Sun Times
Ori Kaplan, Tamir Muskat, Itamar Zeigler, Tomer Yosef, Eyal Talmudi, Peter Hass,
Dana Leong, Uri Kinrod, Jeremiah Loockwood, Ben Handler
www.balkanbeatbox.com
BEIRUT
Beirut, ‘Gulag Orkestar’
Few popular musicians have been punished for their precocity. George Harrison
was 19 when "Love Me Do" debuted on the British charts; Michael Jackson
notched four No. 1 singles before reaching his teens. But those boys were preoccupied
with ABCs and holding hands. Nineteen-year-old Albuquerque, N.M., native Zach
Condon, who records as Beirut, has developed a somewhat less age-appropriate
obsession: Balkan brass-band music. His songs have names like "Mount Wroclai,"
"Prenzlauerberg" and "Bratislava,” and they're adorned
with ukuleles, mandolins, glockenspiels and accordions—everything, it
seems, but guitars. The risk pays off. Sure, "Gulag Orkestar"'s mournful
ballads and creaky marches aren't "authentic" per se—they’re
as much Magnetic Fields as Boban Markovic. But here's to making the Old World
new. (In stores now)
—Andrew Romano
17
HIPPIES
12 years can be long or short. You can walk around the world three times or
spend 10000 Euros
We have been around for ten years now. A name without a programme. More an attempt
to find out if what we do could be a hit…. or doomed to failure. After
the first few glittering years we have slowly lost the image of an oddly assorted
funny band.
The history of our band and its members is almost a chronicle of Berlin music
life since the Eighties. We started off with acoustic unplugged concerts in
changing line-ups including up to twenty musicians. Today there are thirteen
of us on stage: double bass, banjo, ukulele and guitar give a rhythmic base,
the melodious pattern is supplied by violins, cello, accordion, clarinet, trumpet
and trombone.
Our idea from the word go was to mix traditional music from Eastern Europe,
France and America with our own Berlin background. Against the backdrop of anglo-american
pop music we started looking for our own traditions. As time went by, more and
more original compositions and various songs with texts in German, English and
French were written.
Apart from playing live concerts and producing CDs, we have written film music,
cooperated with other musicians and got involved in sideline projects. The HARDCORE
TROBADOURS are a joint project with the band Hurlements d’Léo from
Bordeaux, and the „17 Hippies play…“-edition features musicians
who we think are great: the latest brand new thing is the CD “17 Hipiies
play guitar” with Tom Waits-guitarist Marc Ribot and Element of Crime-guitarist
Jakob Ilja playing electronic guitars.
Our tenth anniversary two years ago was celebrated by presenting our first DVD!
This documentation shows incredible anecdotes and all the differing characters…
The concert was filmed live on stage at the Kesselhaus of the Kulturbrauerei
– a place we feel very much attached to. Jan and Randa did a perfect job
in filming and compiling the DVD, and we are proud and grateful to have such
a fantastic summary of the band history in our hands!
VIVA
PATSHIVA
Viva Patshiva creates a new musical subcountry, somewhere between Transylvania
and New York City, where you'll hear the ethereal voice of Chemda, the evocative
violin of Jesse Kotansky, the gravelly comic genius of Lloyd Floyd, the immortal
howl of Spread Eagle's Ray West, the velvety croon of Raven Solano, and the
soaring flights of Mikey McCue, held together by a tight dance rock Gypsy rhythm
section.is
stellar unit grew out of the improv comic rock band The
Sacred Clowns, which mixed the daring musicians and fearless comedians of New
York City's Lower East Side to mount legendary performance spectacles in the
late 90s. Everything changed in 2001 and a core group of performers began to
develop a full length Rock Opera that combined an over-the-top performance style
with the emotionally charged melodies and dance steps of the Gypsies of Hungary
and Transylvania to tell a story about love and sadness and triumph over the
sadness of love.
Reasons
To Live tells the story of a depressed Gypsy girl who lives under a highway
overpass in Queens with a crazy Gypsy band. Two men are in love with her: a
rich motivational speaker who falls for her exotic dance act at the Pump Room
strip club, and a working class hero who runs the deli near the Gypsy camp.
Filled with unforgettable love songs, drinking songs, dance songs, fight songs
and breakup songs, Reasons To Live is a full-length Rock Opera with tight syncopated
dance numbers, told in a fast-paced comic style.
ZLATNE
USTE
Zlatne Uste (Golden Lips) is an internationally known group of American-born
musicians playing traditional music of the Balkans, primarily representing Serbian,
Macedonian, Bulgarian and Romany (Gypsy) traditions. Four-time invited guest
at the Dragachevo Brass Festival in Gucha, Serbia, the 12-piece band is among
the foremost presenters of traditional Balkan dance music in the United States.
From kolos to Kusturica, experience the rich sounds of driving Balkan brass!
Belle
Birchfield - baritone truba
Morgan Clark - baritone truba
Marian Eines - alto saxophone, vocals
Sarah Ferholt - truba
Catherine Foster - clarinet, truba, vocals
Michael Ginsburg - truba
Tamberlaine Harris - truba
Emerson Hawley - bass truba
Jerry Kisslinger - snare drum, tupan
Dan Kollar - bubanj, tupan
Matt Moran - tupan, snare drum, dumbek
Seido Salifoski - snare drum, tupan
Matthew Smith - baritone truba, trombone
Gary Zema - baritone horn
Luminescent Orchestrii
Romanian gypsy melodies, punk frenzy, salty
tangos, hard rocking klezmer, haunting Balkan harmony, hip-hop beats and Appalachian
fiddle, all eaten and spit out by three violins, resophonic guitar, bullhorn
harmonica and guitarron. The members of Luminescent Orchestrii come from different
backgrounds and scenes in New York City and share a love of the music that people
all over the world listen to while drinking, dancing and weeping.
Rima Fand - violin
Julie Carney - violin
Sarah Alden - violin
Aaron Goldsmith - Guitarron
Sxip Shirey - resophonic guitar, bullhorn harmonicas melodica
www.lumii.org
Zagnut Orkestar
Called "Rollicking!" "Rousing!" & "Rowdy!"
by NYC area newspapers, Brooklyn-based 6-piece Zagnut Orkestar plays the music
of the Roma (gypsy), Macedonian, Serbian, Albanian, Greek and Bulgarian people
of Eastern Europe. Their music is upbeat, funky, edgy and above all, great for
dancing, both in odd and even meters.
Jodi Hewat - Singer
Greg Squared - Sax
Ben Holmes - Trumpet
Jessica Lurie - Sax
Matthew Fass - Accordion
Jeanette Lewicki - Accordion
George Rush - Tuba
Timothy Quigley - Drums
www.zagnutcirkus.com
----------------------------------------------------
Romashka
Romashka draws its repertoire primarily from
Romanian and Russian Gypsies. The musicians have traipsed around Eastern Europe
and the Eastern European enclaves of NYC collecting and imbibing local folk
music and culture. Romashka has roused crowds from BAM CafÈ to the Bulgarian
Bar, from weddings to late-night house parties that have shaken the walls and
drawn the cops."Romashka" is Russian for "daisy." Next to raucous dance numbers
you will also find aching, world-weary love songs, as sweet and unexpected as
a flower in a parking lot.
Inna Barmash - vocals
Jake Shulman-Ment - violin
Jeff Perlman - clarinet & saxophone
Ben Holmes - trumpet
Stevhen Iancu - accordion
Joey Weisenberg - guitar
Ron Caswell - tuba
Timothy Quigley - drums & percussion
www.romashka.net
Globe Sonic Sound System
Featuring top DJs on the global music scene, GlobeSonic was
founded in 2000 by Fabian Alsultany. An international dreamscape weaving the
music of the ancients with modern sensibility, the collective (Alsultany, Acidophilus
& Derek Beres) has toured globally with some of today's most important and
innovative artists. Canvasing Asia, Arabia, Africa, Latin America, India, the
Caribbean and Balkans, GlobeSonic parties have become legendary in the breadth
of music and the ease of transition these DJs make between country, culture
and continent. Comprised of three well-seasoned professionals involved in numerous
facets of America's international music industry, they are proving the world
is at the touch of everyone's fingertips...and hips.
www.globesonic.com
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