From Romania Artist: Fanfare Ciocarlia Title: Iag Bari - The Gypsy Horns from the Mountain Beyond Label: Piranha Musik. Distributed by Harmonia Mundi USA "Sometimes when I tell people I come from Zece Prajini they think I come from the end of the earth. But here, at the end of the earth, is the right place to make music," says trumpeter Costic "Cimai" Trifan. Zece Prajini-which means ten fields-is a village of 400 souls, surrounded by gentle mountains and dusty tracks. Situated in east Romania, it is less than a stone's throw from former Soviet republic Moldova. In the evenings, when the winds calm down, the sounds of the fanfare echo from surrounding slopes. This is the home of the twelve gypsy musicians who make up the brass ensemble Fanfare Ciocarlia who will be on the Fall 2001 Gypsy Caravan tour across North America Romany brass bands originate from the Turkish military bands of the early 19th century. The Ottoman occupation of the Balkans had a considerable influence on the music there. Brass plays a central role in the musical life of the region. However, western-oriented bands with electric instruments are increasingly in demand, and are gradually killing off opportunities for traditional brass bands. Bandleader Ioan Ivancea says, "We're one of the last, and we're the fastest of them all!" This art has been handed down from generation to generation. There is no sheet music. The instruments-bearing the marks of the previous decades-have lost their shine and gained their own patina. Fanfare Ciocarlia manages to set off a musical firework display of traditional dances from Romania and rhythms from Turkey, Bulgaria, and Macedonia. Every weekend the players haul off their instruments to weddings often playing for over thirty hours non-stop. Back in their village they soothe their sore lips and await their next engagement. With an age range from 23 to 69, there is a wonderful symbiosis between the older and younger musicians. There is respectful silence when old master Radulescu Lazar reaches for his trumpet and strikes up a wild dance. The younger musicians' eyes narrow dreamily at these sounds as their fingers nervously caress their instruments. The older musicians wink tolerantly whenever the younger generation blasts new sounds through their horns. Since music cannot only be about tradition, they adapt melodies from movies of Bollywood and Hollywood and adapt international radio hits to their own style. Nowhere else in Eastern Europe is there such a clash of western and eastern musical traditions. In Romania, music still occupies an important place in everyday life. A wedding or other celebration without musicians would be simply unthinkable. Fanfare Ciocarlia's thumping bass, driving percussion and spinning horn solos plunge us straight into a wild world of Romanian Gypsy parties. With their debut tour of America and an upcoming film documentary (excerpted on a PC video on the enclosed CD), US and Canadian audiences will finally get a taste of the brass lightning striking across the world. "Not only does the band play at top volume, it also plays fast, throwing tongued trumpet tuplets into convoluted rhythms that jolt the body... Soloists as familiar with western jazzsters as with traditional currents keep the mixture fresh. as the ensemble turns its horns and reeds into a massive melodo-percussive piston."-Bob Tarte, The Beat Back to top This website: Copyright © 2001 Studio Q Int'l Inc / Urban Mozaik Magazine. All rights reserved. This website/publication, in whole or in part, may not be reproduced without written permission from the publisher or the previous publisher of original republished materials.		From Mozambique Artist: Wazimbo & Orchestra Title: Nwahulwana Label: Piranha Musik. Distributed by Harmonia Mundi USA What Started from an Oil Can and Fishing Line Becomes a Hollywood Hit. A five-liter oil canister and a spool of fishing line. Those were the two main ingredients that made up Mozambique's first guitars and the origins of marrabenta - a form of musical rebellion, first against the colonizers and then against the aggressors to the south that propped up Mozambique's civil war. Marrabenta made its appearance in the 1940s. The conscious lyrics were sung in local languages-something that irked Portuguese authorities. The name marrabenta derives from the playing style. The guitars were strummed with such fervor that the strings would snap. Rebentar means 'to break' in Portuguese and arrabentar is how it is pronounced in Ronga. The ruling government saw marrabenta as a vehicle of revolution. And indeed marrabenta parties became part of the urban communication network. During the war of liberation, the colonial government closed numerous marrabenta venues on the grounds that they were terrorist centers. The country gained independence in 1975, but was immediately faced with a hideous civil war backed by the South African apartheid government - in which one million lives were taken. Marrabenta falls under música ligeira, a genre that was originally played for the ruling class. The local population learned to play European instruments, but soon adapted them to play "African music." "Before independence, most bands played Portuguese pop, but the struggle aroused our interest in the importance of our heritage," said local producer Aurelio Le Bon. "Now we hear music from all over and the music we incorporate like zouk, salsa and reggae joins with our rural sounds to transmit our generation's experience. Black music throughout the world has a thread we can trace." The Orchestra Marrabenta Star de Moçambique, which defined the soundtrack of the era, developed out of the Grupo R.M., the house band of Radio Moçambique. In 1987, Aurélio Le Bon formed the Orchestra as a "seleção" of Mozambique's top musicians. The line-up had as many as 16 members and usually included three lead singers, three guitars, a horn section, a bass, a drum kit, additional percussion, and dancers. They were the first to present this music to the world outside of Africa. Out of this powerhouse came the epic voice of Wazimbo. Born in 1948 in Chibuto-Gaza, in the very north of Mozambique, he grew up in Mafalala, a popular barrio known as Lourenço Marques (today Maputo). Before independence, Mozambique's capital was the big casino for South Africans - like Havana for US citizens of the same era-offering everything that was forbidden at home. Wazimbo started singing in the '60s with the local "Silverstars" band and then the "Geizers," touring all over the Lusophone Empire. Both bands played the colonial mix of international pop with Brazilian music. Wazimbo was the only singer permanently engaged by national radio and Orchestra Marrabenta Star. He made several recordings with this band, among them a classic one in Harare, Zimbabwe in 1988. All titles of this album were selected from this session. The producers were not aware of the existence of the title track, "Nwahulwana," which must have been made during a supposed recording break. It appeared as if magically during remix in London and, by the force of Wazimbo's voice, made its way into history. But the story does not end there. Wazimbo still survives in a country without a recording industry. In 1997, he released a locally produced album (Makwêru, Produções Conga Mozambique) that became a "buy first" recommendation in The Rough Guide: World Music. Meanwhile, "Nwahulwana" started a life of its own. It grew to become a cult hit starting in California where Microsoft used it for an international campaign. And in 2001, Hollywood picked up on the sounds of this sweet and gruff voice. The Pledge, a Hollywood film directed by Sean Penn and starring Jack Nicholson, adopted Wazimbo's everlasting ballad for his sister, in the soundtrack. Back to top				From Tuva Artist: Yat-Kha Title: Aldyn Dashka, or "Golden Cup" Label: Yat-Kha. Distributed by Harmonia Mundi USA Tuvan Punk Folklore Storms America with New CD and Tour Yat-Kha Gives Voice to Restored 1928 Film. The ideology department of the Tuvan Communist Party didn't like it very much when Albert Kuvezin picked up the electric guitar and started singing again. As a little boy he was thrown out of the choir and told to never sing again. It wasn't until the sounds of Deep Purple and Sonic Youth reached his homeland of Tuva - a remote area of southern Siberia surrounded by mountains-that Kuvezin found the musical bridge between his voice, his heritage, and the universe. Kuvezin' special style of throat-singing known as kanzat has all but died out and it's the combination of this impossibly double-bass-deep singing with his progressive punk sensibility that has set the stage for his band Yat-Kha. Tuvan throat-singing reached the American consciousness in the early 1990s largely through the recordings and performances of Huun-Huur-Tu, of which Kuvezin was a founding member. Feeling trapped inside the markedly "folkloric" style of Huun-Huur-Tu, Kuvezin found himself in the midst of a perestroika/ glasnost-induced spring-thaw punk rock explosion. The captivating band embarked on an unprecedented tour of over twenty American concerts in September and October of 2001. The band is rounded out by four other players. Yat-Kha's percussionist, Zhenya Tkachov, grew up as a Staro Vera ("Old Believer"), a population that has been living at the upper waters of the Kaa-Khem river in Tuva for generations. Persecuted by officials, this cultural group may now be more Russian than the Russians because they preserved the old language, traditions, and way of life. Tkachov has performed with the Tuvan State symphony, played in several popular Tuvan bands, and likes walking for days in the endless steppe reading books about philosophy along the way. Siberian-born Makhmud Skripaltschchikov went to Tuva from Krasnoyarsk as a young boy. When not playing with the band, he can be found rowing around the Yenisei river and clambering up its cliffs without ropes (or insurance). Sailyk Ommun's name means "little bird"-a name given to her by her Uncle who said "let her sing like a bird." She sings in the Tuvan women's style-which is very "bluesy" with jumping and bending melodies and as the youngest member of the band at 22, she has integrated many modern influences into her style. Replacing Aldyn-ool Sevek (who is up in the high Altai mountains on paternity leave) is young throat-singer and ace morinhuur player Radik Tiuliush who comes from the cattle-rustling southern border with Mongolia.. This fall's extraordinary tour finds Yat-Kha alternating between straight concert performances and an improvised live soundtrack and lip-sync together with the classic 1928 silent movie "Storm over Asia." The movie was filmed in Buryatia, Tuva, and Mongolia by Soviet director Vsevolod Pudovkin, in 1928 just after the terrible civil war of the 1920s. This masterpiece of early Soviet cinema was lost to the world for 70 years, censored beyond belief by Russian and British officials seeking to cover their country's hideous violence in the region. Now restored to its full 144 minutes, the film is given new voice by Yat-Kha-some of whose members could very well be the great-great grandchildren of the film's subjects. Back to top