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Written in fRoots issue 202, 2000

VARIOUS ARTISTS
Cry You Mountains, Cry You Fields
Saydisc CD-SDL 431 (1999)

Tucked inside the non-design of this album’s packaging nestles beautiful, real-thing music, rarely heard abroad; nineteen tracks of keening, sliding instrumental and vocal music recorded in the Kolonja region of south-east Albania from past or present members of the Kolonja Folk Ensemble. Aleks Xhelili, the Ensemble’s leader, in particular emerges as an absolute master of expressive, intimate clarinet playing, caressing a tune, every note full of understated control and hinted grace-notes, over accompaniment on llautë, a large-bodied eight-string lute, by Gjergji Mulellari. On one track he leads on accordion, to which he brings same flowing shape and subtlety, some notes barely feather-touched.
      The gajde, bagpipe, has nearly died out in the region since the end of the communist era, but its musical influence still persists in the pipëzat (reed-pipe) playing of the late Nevrus Solo, who was also recorded playing the instrument for which he was best known in the district, the kaval-like herder’s flute. Both he and his daughter appear as singers in the vocal ensembles, which are all either male or female; mixed groups are apparently unknown in Kolonja music. The Tosk style of polyphony of the region features a lead vocal against a group drone, the men’s songs, sometimes accompanied by clarinet and llautë, speaking of such as great deeds or emigration, the women’s unaccompanied and tending to marriage and family life.
      Half the recordings were made by Chris Johnston on a 1996 field-trip, the other half come from 1994-5 tapes, stored at the local Palace of Culture, of rehearsals for festivals. On one of these latter, a recording of Ali Koleci and Agim Najkolli duetting against a male group vocal drone, there’s a strange but rather magical extra part generated, it appears, by distortion in the reverb.
      Even in its occasional more strident vocal moments, there’s a reflectiveness about this music. Life in Kolonja, already hard, has been saddened even further by the pain of Kosovo; all profits from the sale of this album will go to help relief work there. As with Balkans Without Borders, reviewed a while back, I’m not praising it to be kind; this is really special music.


© 2000 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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