Hello, dear listeners and readers! I apologize for the long hiatus from the blog. Holidays, family commitments and illness have kept me busy enough that I lost track of time but I have not forgotten you all. To get back into the Balkan musical spirit, as it were, I thought it would be fun to explore an category of Balkan folk songs we haven’t specifically discussed before: Bandit songs! Well, more properly, Hajduk songs.
In the nineteenth century, when nationalism spread across Europe, it set fire to the predominantly Ottoman controlled Balkans. Independence was the goal. We’ve discussed it before, but the fight for independence and self-determination in the Balkans really gained momentum at this time. and Hajduks were a major part of that fight. They weren’t merely outlaws and thieves–though they were that, too–but they were also the guerrilla fighters, the romantic rebel leaders of the whole movement.
For us, as music lovers and musicians alike, the most exciting thing about these hajduk rebels is their role in folk songs. In song, as the passion of nationalism grew, hajduks became heroes: the forbidden lover, the honorable brother, the clever freedom fighter.
From Bulgaria: this song is about a young woman who defies her mother to be with her hajduk lover.
Here we sing about Jana, headed into the forest where she might find bandits. It’s an awfully happy song for someone who might meet outlaws in the forest. Maybe these outlaws are more like Robin Hood and his Merry Men.
Here is a fun modern arrangement of a Romanian song about Hajduks:
One of my favorite of the bandit songs we ‘Zekkies sing. In this song, Iljo gives the Ottoman soldiers the slip by hanging out in a bar, drinking brandy, and flirting with pretty girls.
For our final song today, I’ll leave you all with this surprising find. Apparently Bulgarian hajduks were so famous that even the Irish wrote songs about them.
Every year since I had the pleasure of joining Mzekala, we have been singing at the International Advent Bazaar at St. Michael’s and All Angels Episcopal Church here in Tucson. This is a concert near and dear to our hearts. We sing some of our favorite songs and let our hair down a little bit. Our performance is on December 3rd, and we’ll start singing at 6:30 and perform two sets. Our music will wrap up at 7:30pm. The event is free and there are usually light refreshments available. For those of you who could not make it to the 20th Anniversary Concert, we’ll be singing a small sampling of the many, many songs we did for our big day. For those of you who were there, I hope you’ll come out to hear a few surprises! All and all this concert should be a great time in support of many wonderful causes.
You won’t get to hear this gem from our big concert:
…but you might get to hear some other wonderful tunes like this:
The International Advent Bazaar is really a wonderful little fund raiser and event. Relaxed, joyful and intimate: the room is always filled with good people and amazing crafts. Even better, these small businesses and organizations support a host of wonderful causes. This year a special edition is the inclusion of Ten Thousand Villages.
Not the Advent Bazaar but a lovely view of St. Michael’s:
Hope to see you there! Stop by and visit with us during our break Saturday night!
~Jocelynne
Mzekala’s 20th Anniversary Concert: We’ve been planning and preparing, working and rehearsing for months now. Until yesterday, the concert still seemed hypothetical and distant. I was excited with distant, half-felt sensation of nervous energy that I get when something wonderful is happening. Today that energy is filling me head to toe. There is nothing distant about it. The palpable excitement, that razor’s edge of nervousness that imbues my performances with what I think of as sparkle, it’s hear. I hope to direct it toward making part of the best performance we Zekkies have ever given.
Part of the excitement is most certainly seeing each and every one of you out in the audience. If you’ve been on the stage, then you know what it is like to have the joy, interest and excitement of the audience come washing up to crash into you on the stage. It is a bit like a first kiss–unknown and wonderful and unpredictable all at once. For me there is nothing so wonderful as singing in front of an audience, especially such a wonderful audience as you all. More than just people who like like music, you are friends, family and fellow lovers of Balkan music. Our bonds are many and strong. I can in no way begin to express how grateful I am for each of you and for that connection we share.
To share in the mixture of joy and anticipation in the final days before the concert, I have been counting down the days with songs on Facebook. Since we are down to one day, I thought I would share a couple of joyful songs with you all here. Tomorrow, we’ll do a good bit of sharing in music and all of the emotions that our music entails–joy and sadness, love and longing, laughter and remembrance–but today is about joy and excitement.
Happy Halloween! Or to harken back to older roots, happy All Hallow’s Eve! For many of us in North America, today is a purely secular celebration. We may dress up in costumes from the silly to the frightening, pass out candy to youngsters at our door, or carve pumpkins. There may be parties with friends or haunted houses, but it is all very much about having fun and very little to do with remembering the dearly departed or honoring any Saints.
I grew up doing all of those things on Halloween and loving the day. After all, I love costumes! Any excuse to dress up has always been good for me. I did also grow up with a tradition for remembering and showing respect to dearly departed family members but those traditions were disconnected from All Saints Day by the time I was born. It wasn’t until I moved to the American Southwest that I began to see an entirely different set of traditions around Halloween time.
My first introduction was in Santa Fe, New Mexico. There is an amazing city wide festival, Zozobra, that starts out the fall and mixed in with that celebration are hints of the upcoming Day of the Dead. By the time All Saints Day arrives, there are marigolds, Catrinas, and sugar skulls all over the place. For a girl far from her Oklahoma home town, there can also be an extreme sense of being a stranger in a strange land.
At the time I was in Santa Fe, I certainly missed the traditions I grew up with but started to appreciate the beauty of the Day of the Dead celebrations. Because I had gone with my grandmother and great auntie to clean and decorate family graves every year growing up, I could certainly appreciate the tradition of spending time with family graves, visiting the graveyard to remember the departed. However, the Day of the Dead celebrations, as I experienced them in Santa Fe and here in Arizona, were certainly a lot more flamboyant and fun than our quiet yearly trip to the family graves with garden shears and bouquets.
I think like many people I had an awareness that funeral, burial and death traditions varied all over the world but I was so dazzled by the mix of beauty and reverence around the Dead of the Dead traditions here in the Southwest, that I quite forgot about how beautiful and reverent other traditions are as well. Many cultures share a similar attitude to that we see here in the Southwest when it comes toAll Saints Day or All Souls Day which is generally celebrated around the beginning of November and may be treated as two distinct celebrations or rolled into one, coinciding with the days after Halloween. This is the case all over the Balkans. People visit family graves, clean them up for the year, bring food and wine. The specific traditions vary from community to community, of course, but there is the universal practice of paying respect to the dearly departed, making a connection with deceased loved ones, and spending time with family graves.
Svi Sveti (All Saints Day) in Croatia:
In many parts of the Balkans and Eastern Europe, hundreds and sometimes thousands of candles in colored glass holders are placed on the graves.
In some parts of the Balkans such as Bulgaria and Macedonia, people share a meal around the graves of loved ones 40 days after the death as well as on All Saints’ Day. A meal is prepared with favorite dishes of the departed and a place is set for that person. The family pours a cup of wine on the grave and in some traditions the various family members pour the first sip from their individual cups onto the grave as well. The celebration is not only limited to family graves. Often, those visiting the graveyard will also take care of neglected or very old graves with no family to care for them, honoring those departed individuals so they will not be forgotten.
Since I cannot visit most of my own family graves any more, I like to hope that some kind stranger will take a moment to care for those graves and honor them as they might in the Balkans or here in the Southwest. While I have continued to follow my family tradition of visiting and cleaning the graves here in Tucson on Memorial day, after living in the Southwest for so many years, I have also begun to associate this time of year with a time to remember those loved ones I have lost and to take comfort in my memories. Tomorrow, I will honor my Slavic roots and my family by spending time with my father and uncle, my grandmother and grandfather at the cemetery. May you have a happy Halloween and may you have comfort in your own fond memories of loved ones near and far.
We are in the final countdown to November 5th. I am so excited about the concert that I can barely contain myself. Our beautiful programs are at the printers right now. The Mistress of Chaos did the most amazing job writing the program and The Scribbler painted the most amazing piece for our program art. The program itself is 2 long sets of many old favorites and many new tunes. It’s a wonderful balance between what we have been singing over the course of our 20 year history and where we are going musically in the future.
The next ten days are going to be a whirlwind of activity. We’re still looking for a couple of volunteers to stand at the entrance and take tickets. Those volunteers will get free entrance to the concert. If you have any interest in helping out, you will have the gratitude of all the Zekkies. We are known to spontaneously sing out of gratitude.
Also coming up tomorrow, October 27th, the Mistress of Chaos and I will be guests on Global Rhythm Radio on KXCI. The show starts at 6pm, and Barb and I will go on the air around 7pm. Our host, Maryann, will be playing a lot of Balkan music that night so the first hour should be a really good listen. Please tune in to support Mzekala and to support this great show on KXCI. If you can’t listen to the show over the radio, they will be live streaming the show through the website. Just go the homepage and check the left hand column for a link to what’s currently playing.
In honor of the ten day countdown to concert, I am running a couple of contests for free tickets. Please visit our Facebook page and our Twitter feed for the details. Also in honor of the final countdown to the big day, we have added a limited edition mug and bag to our CafePress store. The art on the mug and bag is the same art we are using for our 20th Anniversary program and posters.
Mzekala is a small group and we have always been supported by you, our loyal fans and listeners. Without you all, we wouldn’t be counting down to a 20th Anniversary Concert. It’s the partnership between you all, the listeners, and we the singers that really makes Mzekala come alive. Thank you for your 20 years of steadfast support! Thank you for the support you have provided to us for the concert. Every time you mention Mzekala or our concert, you really help to make us more successful. Thank you, with all my heart, thank you!
Most everyone in Bulgaria will recognize singer Valya Balkanska – and many won’t be embarrassed to sing a bit of her most famous song, Izlel e Deljo Hajdutin (ask us, we should have taken videos!) Here’s the contemporary: Izlel E Delyo Haydutin from Bulgarian Idol. But you really need to check out the original as well: Valya Balkanska, the recording that travelled on Voyager. Don’t miss the beautiful Rhodope costume & scenery.
Readers of the blog will recognize the name of Le Mystere Des Voix Bulgares. Three of the singers are famous both in their own right and as Trio Bulgarka. You’ve seen them on another post with Kate Bush. Trio Bulgarka is Yanka Rupkina from Standzha, Stoyanka Boneva from Pirin, and Eva Georgieva from Dobrudzha. In this recording of Lalitsa sung by Yanka Rupkina, there is a really amazing kaval accompaniment by Theodosii Spassov. (The kaval deserves a post of its own … perhaps another day). To see how these ladies looked in 1989, watch this performance of Zaplakala E Gorata with the Biserovi sisters (they are all identified in the comments).
The late Nadka Karadjova from the region of Thrace was another singer well known outside of Bulgaria. She was famous as part of Quartet Slavei (nightingale) as well as a soloist. Here she is singing Neno le. The ornaments – wow, they have to be heard and savored is all I can say. We should all rock the house like this 2009 performance of Moma Kalina by the quartet. Hey, I want to sing like that when I’m 70!
I’ll close the post with a lovely lady and mentor, Donka Koleva. Donka performs with her family and with Kabile Wedding Band. This song, Turci ot Kalofer Slyazoha, showcases her beautiful voice and again features many ornaments.
It’s been an eclectic tour – with many opportunities to re-visit in order to hear more leading ladies!
For many of us who love Balkan music, our passion started with the folk music of Bulgaria. Often it started with one group in particular, Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares. Whether it was a bootleg tape handed off by a friend or the performance on Johnny Carson or a certain car commercial, Le Mystere certainly made the rounds and managed to introduce a whole host of people to the tremendous vocal tradition of Bulgaria. Many others discovered Bulgarian music through the international folk dancing scene. The rhythms, the haunting harmonies, the pure voices: they were a gateway drug to Balkan music.
We’ve mentioned Bulgarian music many times here on the blog. We’ve even dedicated a whole post to Koutev and several posts to the inimitable Bai Ganyo. For all of that, however, we have not focused on a tour of Bulgaria. It is definitely time to make an official blog visit to that land of mysterious voices and fantastic rhythms.
Though there is a great deal of stylistic and technical similarity in all of the folk music of Bulgaria, there are some definite distinctions and traditional music is usually categorized by region. Instrumentation, types of songs, types of dances, all vary between the regions. So do the costumes, but I am trying, mightily, to restrain myself from focusing too much on the beautiful embroidery and extraordinary headgear in Bulgarian folk costumes.
I discovered this song on Youtube and while I had never heard of the Strandja Region, I was immediately smitten with the sound. Strandja is in the southeast of Bulgaria, named for the local mountains and reaching into Turkey. Strandja is home to the very particular tradition Nestinarstvo or dancing barefoot on coals. That is some hard core dancing!
A bit more than a year ago, three of the Zekkies had the pleasure of visiting Bulgaria and, in particular, visiting the festival in Plovdiv. They had a tremendous time in Plovdiv! Plovdiv is in Thrace, a region in Southeastern Bulgaria.
From Thrace:
The Pirin Mountains help define another region of Bulgaria. The Pirin Region is in Blagoevgrad Province. We sing a number of songs from this region and several of our aprons that we have been wearing at recent concerts came from this region as well. Gotse Delchev is often talked about in loving tones by the Zekkie who from that Bulgarian trip.
I hope you all have enjoyed this very brief tour of Bulgarian music. I often feel that Balkan music is as vast and complicated a subject as the exploration of Jazz or the study of all the centuries of classical music. There is no way to truly do the various regional traditions justice in a short post, but I hope that I have given you some small aural sense for the differences and the richness of Bulgarian music. If I have neglected to mention any musical region of Bulgaria the fault is entirely my own and certainly not meant as an intentional slight.
If you are in Tucson this weekend, you don’t need to surf the web or the radio stations to fill up your weekend with good music. As I mentioned on Wednesday, Mzekala will be singing at TMY this year, and I know it will be a fantastic time! It is also a completely free way to see some amazing live bands and to explore some music you might not have heard before. In honor of Tucson Meet Yourself, I would like to share a few of these amazing local bands with you.
Batucaxe, if you haven’t seen them, are pretty fantastic live. I’m not sure a video can actually capture that energy. I personally find it impossible to stand still when I hear them playing.
I talk about these guys all the time, but really, Balkan Spirit is a wonderful Balkan music band and Anton is a friend. I can’t help my fan girl ways.
There is a lot of dancing to all of that live music at TMY and no wonder! It’s great dance music.
Our fellow Eastern European music makers, the Bouncing Czechs, will make an appearance this year. If you like polka, these guys are hot!
Tucson really is amazingly diverse which suits me just fine! I love all of the amazing and talented musicians who are here following their musical passions.
Tucson is also rich in many traditions. I often refer to these traditional musicians as part of Tucson Treasures. Here is Marvin Todacheenie playing Navajo Flute.
Do you like classical guitar? I think my brief time in Santa Fe made me a forever fan or it could have been that amazing guitar teacher in the music department. Garbriel Ayala has some magical fingers and he will share his talents this weekend at TMY.
Before I found a musical home with my sisters in Balkan music making, I was a pretty huge fan of the Irish and Scottish traditional music scene. I still love this music and I always try to get a listen to a few of the awesome Irish and Scottish bands who play TMY. Perpetual favorites, Seven Pipers, definitely know how to put a bagpipe to good use.
The music this weekend spans the globe, and no matter your taste in music, I’m sure you can find something to love, something to surprise your ears, and something to learn. My must see band this year, Planet Djembe. I haven’t heard them before, but like all of the Zekkies, I appreciate rhythm, and boy howdy, does Planet Djembe know rhythm.
Long before I even thought about moving to Tucson, the University of Arizona sent a Mariachi band to my high school to recruit. I was intrigued–there wasn’t a lot of Mariachi in Tulsa, Oklahoma–and I dug it. When I moved here, I thought I’d hear a lot of Mariachi. There certainly are some great Mariachi bands in Tucson, but there is a lot more to the traditional Southwestern music scene. And you can hear it all at TMY!
You may not have heard this but they say, “You can take the girl out of Oklahoma but you can’t take the Okie out of the girl.” In my case, this is definitely true. I spent many a happy night at Cain’s Ballroom, looking at the smiling faces of old Country stars on the walls while I rocked out. For those of you who like a little country to go with your western, like me, you will find some music to satisfy your ears.
If none of these wonderful bands have you planning out your weekend at Tucson Meet Yourself, well, then maybe my secret weapon will get you down there Saturday night.
For those of you who follow us on Facebook and Twitter, you probably already know that we are performing this coming weekend at Tucson Meet Yourself. We’ll be performing on the City Hall Stage at 5:30 pm on Saturday, October the 15th. The performance will be a bit of a preview of our upcoming 20th Anniversary Concert. We’ll be performing some old tunes, some favorites, and a few new songs.
Tucson Meet Yourself has to be one of my favorite downtown events here. The organizers bring together such a wonderfully
Photo by Steven Meckler
diverse group of performers, local clubs, food vendors, and artisans. Mia Hansen and all of the TMY staff and volunteers deserve such a huge round of applause for their hard work and their wonderful results. Every year there is something new and amazing that I have never heard or seen before, and I never manage to do hear half of what I would like to!
I think Mzekala has been performing at TMY pretty much such our group began. I know we have been there every year that I’ve been singing with the group. The warmth and welcome of the crowd, the sheer appreciation for folk music and art is just overwhelming. I cannot say enough good things about this festival or how very much I love singer there every year.
If you have not had an opportunity to enjoy TMY, treat yourself to something special and head down there this weekend. I hope that you will make time to join us at the City Hall Stage, but even if you can’t make it out to see Mzekala, just come out to see and experience some small part of this Tucson treasure. It’s free, it’s wonderful, and the weather will be pretty darn nice this weekend!
Growing up in the late 70s and 80s, for me most of Eastern Europe and the Balkans was mixed up into a confusing haze of that land behind the Berlin Wall and under the control of the USSR. Sometimes these countries would become somewhat concrete spots on a political map, carefully colored in and marked with their capitols for a geography test. I was curious, but perhaps like many people of my age and in my part of the world, I had an extremely simplistic and muddled view of the eastern parts of Europe. My muddled view was not improved any by the adults around me who oftened shared that same confused understand of the East, lumping together so many different ethnic groups, countries, and regions under the over-arching banner of the Soviet Union.
Growing up at that time, I felt like I was always deeply aware of the Berlin Wall and I remember vividly when the wall came down. I think like many people I was elated by the possibilities and by hope, moved deeply by the joy I saw on the news, and at times brought to tears. It seemed like such a blow to oppression, at the time, and such a victory for freedom and unity in the world. I was 13 and innocent and naive in pretty equal measures. I also really, really didn’t understand the history of the many different regions that seemed to be separated from the West by the symbolic stretch of that wall. I might have been able to find some of those countries on the map but I couldn’t have said much
Photo Credit: Peter Turnley/Corbis
about the people in those countries–their hopes, their dreams, their differences, their similarities.
In the wake of that iconic moment, as heads both wiser and more knowledgeable than my own could have predicted, there was ever increasing political dissension and violence as former leaders were ousted, old regimes were toppled, and nationalism raised its head. Coming from an often simplistic view of the East, I think it was frequently easier for many people to simply identify those formerly unknown and misunderstood countries, regions and ethnic groups by their political strife.
This is not a political blog and I won’t even begin to try to piece apart the complicated political and military history of the Balkans and Eastern Europe. However, I believe that some of that view of Eastern Europe and the Balkans as nothing more than a political powder keg continues more than 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and I would like to expand that view. My hope is that we can put faces, stories, history and, most importantly for a music blog, songs to those countries and people of the Balkans, Eastern Europe and the Near East.
Today as we continue to make our region by region, country by country, introduction to the Balkans, we return once more to part of the former Yugoslavia, The Republic of Serbia. Like all of the music we sing in Mzekala, I am a big fan of our Serbian songs. With the complex, compound rhythms that we hear all over the Balkans, these songs make me want to dance as often as they make me want to sing. One of our favorite songs deals with dancing in particular. I even dedicated a whole post to this particular song. Ajde Jano is all about dancing. And sometimes it’s about more than that; sometimes it’s all about picking yourself up and choosing to dance and find joy in the midst of life’s troubles.
A few years ago, we ran into a rather sultry rendition of Ajde Jano. This is a different video but no less steamy than the gold lamé wearing, poll-dancing singer from the sultry version of several years ago.
Of course, Serbia has more to offer musically than Ajde Jano, no matter how much I enjoy that tune. This video is a compilation of three beautiful Serbian folk songs recording in the mid 1950s to the mid 1960s. The voices are exquisite.
Another wonderful folk song: this one is an ensemble piece with some call and response. Call and response songs are a common feature throughout the Balkans. This one is interesting, in part, because the response melody is different than the original call melody.
I wish we had a little more of this nameless song and the woman’s singing, but we’ll have to make due with this delightful clip.
Of course, Serbian music isn’t all women’s songs. There are some fantastic tunes for the men as well.
If you already keep up with Balkan music and with Serbian music in particular, you may have heard of Turbo-folk which is a sort of modern pop music take on Serbian folk music. As with all genres of music, not every Turbo-follk song is equally lovely, but there are some pieces definitely worth hearing. I am rather fond of Jelena Tomaševic‘s voice so I will share a couple of her pieces with you.
We started our Serbian music off with a song about dancing so it seems only fair that I share some Serbian folk dancing before we’re done today.
Hello, dear listeners and readers! I apologize for the long hiatus from the blog. Holidays, family commitments and illness have kept me busy enough that I lost track of time but I have not forgotten you all. To get back into the Balkan musical spirit, as it were, I thought it would be fun to explore an category of Balkan folk songs we haven’t specifically discussed before: Bandit songs! Well, more properly, Hajduk songs. 
