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Written in fRoots issue 275, 2006
 

LADO
From The Treasure Of Croatian Folk Music 2
Aquarius CD 88-05 (2005)

The twentieth CD by Lado, Croatia’s national dance and song ensemble (see the feature in fR 272) presents a sampler of songs and the odd instrumental from across the country, covering material and styles from sixteen regions from the hills of the north to Istria and the Dalmatian coast and islands in the south. That’s the kind of thing national ensembles have to do.
      They’re also expected to do it to a kind of idealised perfection, and as part of an entertainment spectacle, which tends to iron out the sort of personal expression the music would have had, in some cases still has, in the villages, even though many of Lado’s singer/dancers and musicians came from village music or dance to join the company. There’s something of a circularity: the amateur village groups that meet to rehearse and occasionally perform their folklore see this crystallisation of their traditions and are often influenced to emulate it.
      But given the constraints Lado do try to get as close to the forms and techniques of village music as they can, and though some of this music is hearty singing backed by bouncy tambura ensemble, that’s the way it is, or was, in some places; it all comes from one or other tradition. Yes, this is a highly organised costumed, choreographed ensemble charged with preserving national culture, but it’s worth listening past the decorative impression.
      The massed vocal sound, particularly on the acapella numbers, is impressive, and certainly not operatic. There are sub-groups, too, where particular characters emerge; a song from Dalmatinska Zagora is delivered by a small male vocal group in the local angular, dronal, voice-breaking style. In the song that follows it, from Međimurje up on the Hungarian border, Verica Radić has the fine hard edge of the region, as do the small group of female singers of a song from Primorje, on the north end of the Dalmatian coast.
      The hardness of vocal sound and degree of dronal or more chordal polyphony varies by region; it’s part of the job that Lado’s singers (who are also the dancers) have to be able to cover the range of styles, whether they come from that region or not. The band members (who aren’t required to dance) constitute not only the tambura ensemble but a multi-folk-instrumental backing group, and here they get some instrumentals, including a typical lijerica solo kolo from the Dubrovnik area and a medley from Baranja, the region tucked between the Hungarian and Serbian borders, that involves fiddles, non-pedal cimbalom, tamburas, dvojnice, diplice and gajde.


© 2006 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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