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Written in Folk Roots issue 158/159, 1996

JOVA STOJILJKOVIC “BESIR” & HIS BRASS ORKESTAR
Blow “Besir” Blow!
Globestyle CDORBD 038 (1995)

LAVER BARIU
Songs From The City Of Roses
Globestyle CDORBD 091 (1995)

In that flickering patchwork of countries just across the Adriatic from Italy there thrive some distinctive, energetic musics, many continuing to survive whatever the change of border or government.

      Kim Burton tracked down the Romany brass band led by Jova Stojiljkovic in its home village of Golemo Selo near Vranje, Serbia, using the information painted on the head of the bass drum, and in 1989 got them into a studio in Berlin. It’s totally unlike the sound of British brass bands; try to imagine an all-brass mariachi band playing a variety of Balkanish rhythms, fast and slow, accompanied by thick-stick/thin-stick bass drum (bubanj) and cymbal - chugging, squeezing, the lead trumpets dancing and skipping fast and light. A surprisingly mariachi feel to a lot of it, though. There, that’s roughly what it sounds like; to say more would be to paraphrase Burton’s sleeve notes (excellent on both of these albums) updated for this CD re-release.

      Less than 300 miles to the south, at Përmet in southern Albania near the Greek border, Burton and Ben Mandelson in 1994 recorded Laver Bariu and his group, who open a window on a different musical world. Here rhythms with an Arabic sort of feel on def (big tambourine), llautë (a deep-bellied lute) and accordion underpin yearning, interweaving polyphonic male and female vocals and slithering clarinets making lines against shifting drones. A Balkan soulful lyricism and harmonic approach enters too, particularly on the slow sections such as the intro to Valle O Tiranës.

      Thank you, goers-boldly of Globestyle, the label that often seems to have found and recorded remarkable music long before the rest of us stumble across it.


© 1996 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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