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Written in fRoots issue 348, 2012


EAST GIPSY BAND
Ageless Message
Fonó FA 262-2 (2011)

Hungary is currently showing a worrying rise in political representation of nationalist ignorance, including anti-Roma hate. Yet many of its most sophisticated and brilliant young musicians are Roma, and here is sparkling, gorgeous evidence.
     The seven members of the East Gipsy Band are masters of music that truly and naturally pulls together the improvising freedom of jazz with the melodic riches of the wider spectrum of musics created and played with such skill by Roma musicians across Europe.
     Gusztáv Balogh, who wrote most of the song lyrics, to traditional or original melodies, has a huskily subtle voice that makes very clear the connection between central and east European Gypsy music and flamenco/rumba, as well as being perfectly suited to warmly mellifluous crooning. The band, wonderfully fluent in the worlds of cimbalom (Vilmos Oláh), violin and guitar (Lajos Sárközi), tenor sax (Gábor Bolla) and jazz piano (József Balázs), underpinned with the finest of judgement by Krisztián Lakatos’s double bass and Elemér Balázs’s drums and joined for some tracks by US soprano saxist Tim Ries, is equally at home with Grappelli-style smoky French/Belgian manouche or hinting at flamenco and rumba with touches of palmas and Spanish guitar.
     A luminous, heart-singing album to lift the spirits and calm the soul even on a bad-news day.

     www.fono.hu



© 2012 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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