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Written in fRoots issue 341/342, 2011


ČAČI VORBA
Tajno Biav – Secret Marriage
Oriente RIEN CD 81

At first glance here’s another non-Balkan band playing Balkan material; a Polish quintet with a Romanian Roma name whose songs are largely from the traditions, and in the languages of, the Roma of Romania, Bulgaria and their neighbours.
     But Čači Vorba, and this its second album, stands out, and the most outstanding aspect is startlingly fine singer, fiddler and Pontic kemençe player Maria Natanson. In her early teens she deserted classical music school to travel in the villages of the Tatras to learn from traditional Goral, Slovak and Roma musicians, and it’s clear that during the decade since then she has drunk so deep of the essence of their songs and techniques that, rather than copies of someone else’s music, they have become her natural expression. Her singing is rich-toned with joyful, airy passion, commanding with great subtlety the distinctive Roma vibrato, and her fiddling is exuberant, inventive and masterly.
     It’s not all about Maria, though. The arrangements by guitar, bouzouki and mandola player and singer Piotr Majczyna, who like Maria has been a member of long-established and influential Lublin roots band the St Nicholas Orchestra, with Pawel Sójka’s accordion, double-bassist Robert Brzozwski, and Ukrainian Lyubomyr Ishchuk’s hand-drums, plus guest clarinettist Dimitry Gerasimov, are deeply understanding of the material in a constantly interesting stream of creative approaches.
     www.oriente.de


© 2011 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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