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Written in fRoots issue 228, 2002

VARIOUS
Kosovo Roma Nika/Arhefon AF01

A fascinating and invigorating set of very live field recordings made by Svanibor Pettan between 1984-1991 in the then multi-ethnic Kosovo, where Roma were generally despised but their musicians were appreciated, adapting and utilising all the musical forms that came their way.
The first batch was recorded at social events, all of it lively: wild shawms, drums, saxes, clarinet, flugelhorn and accordions from wedding bands, women accompanying themselves on big tambourines, screaming amplified band of sax, synth, electric guitar and drums playing for the dancing in the street to celebrate a circumcision.
Then comes Roma music for Roma: a solo vocal lament, a Dervish leader singing with his boy pupils, more singers with tambourines with talava music, a genre with Albanian words and Rom rhythms that metamorphosed around the 1980s into an amplified dance music form, of which there’s an examples here too, with synth, electric guitar and bass and drumkit (which, unless there’s an unmentioned darabukka player, seems to be generally used tight-tuned without snares, giving a fast-rolling, pattering darabukka sort of sound). This new-style talava music linked up with the music of Ferus Mustafov and others across the border in Macedonia; there’s a track from Macedonian clarinettist Tunan Kurtišev and his band.
Further illustrating the multi-ethnicity of the people and their music, a group of women with tambourines in Prizren are recorded singing a sequence of songs switching languages between Albanian, Serbian and the Goranci dialect of ethnic Muslims, and elementary school teacher Ahmet Kalo sings with a Turkish wedding ensemble of clarinet, electric sazes and drum, the musicians seated round the food-spread wedding table.
Music from the Indian films shown in Kosovo cinemas is grist to the mill, too, here given Gypsy fast-paced zing and instrumentally modified to suit Agim Hadri’s ensemble of electric accordion with cheesy-organ sound, cumbus and drumkit by, but sung by Faton Lubunari still in Hindi. Not just Indian films, either - there’s a song from the same band in praise of Dynasty’s Alexis. The CD (which is CD-ROM enhanced with photos, video, lyrics and two of Svanibor Pettan’s articles) ends with two versions of the lambada tune Llorando Se Fue. Both are far removed from Costa-MOR, one played on two shawms and two tapan drums segue-ing into a high-note screaming rendition of Ederlezi (here titled Herdelezi), the other, with extemporising and fast ornamentations played by Burim Hadri, who manages to instil that wild and honky Gypsy sound into even his electronic keyboard-generated drums and Roland SH101 mono-synth, held upright like his father Agim holds his electric accordion.
Pettan uses the past tense in describing the music and social occasions in his liner notes, written ten years and a Kosovo nightmare after the last of his recordings. Where are these people, their music and social gatherings now, one wonders. Surviving somewhere, perhaps, as “economic migrants”.




© 2002 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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