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Written in Folk Roots issue 184, 1998

ENSEMBLE TIRANA
Chants Polyphoniques D’Albanie
Iris 3001 807 (1998)

A drone of three male voices supports twisting, melismatic, sliding vocal interplay and varying textures from up to four other voices: the marësi (“taker”), pritesi (“cutter”), kthyesi (“giver”), and the hedhesi (“thrower”). This is extraordinary music, in some ways comparable in feel to the dark yearning melody plus drone of Armenian duduk playing. In the Tirana Ensemble the marësi is the deep, rich female voice of Irini Qirjako, soloist of the National Folk Ensemble; all the other voices are male, from bass-baritone to tenor.
      The Ensemble takes its material from several of the southern traditions, the heartlands of Albanian polyphony. There are lyrical and love songs, whose words were sometimes changed in public singing to avoid the strictures of censorship but which persisted in more private family celebrations, together with the epic song evolved during the long period of Albanian resistance to the Ottoman occupation which lasted from the 15th century until 1912.
      Remarkable and achingly beautiful.


© 1998 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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