Kočani Orkestar
A Gypsy Brass Band

THE REVIEW

It is still an album from 1994, therefore outside the blame of exploiting the Balkan fanfare fad proposed by Bregovic (who has been living off it until now) attached as a not-so-"Underground" soundtrack by the ultimate charlatan, Kusturica.

The "very picturesque" perception triggered in Westerners by Goran's brass is immediately revised upon listening to these Macedonian gypsies led by Naat Veliov. Majestic in triggering a primordial humor seasoned with the superb mystification of pretending they can't read or write Cyrillic (well, they're gypsies, you would say) only to drag you into "flautolenze" where everything transforms into "Oro & Čoček."

A sensate sarabande gives way to always implausible accelerations that sweat on their own, but for a few moments, in the agitated performances, they gift us with a touch of the sacred, a liturgy with a piece of relic attached, a monstrance revisited as a wind instrument. The less bitter legacy of the "mammaliturchi," the military bands of winds and percussions, rhythm the ugly toads swallowed during the Ottoman domination, where the gypsy Balkan reinterpretation transforms the original belonging to the Porte into its own, sealing a liberation from Anatolian ties even on a psychic level.

The nomadic quid makes the difference of an unbridled logic vortex in its uncontrollability. The flow naturally presents itself unstoppably, the pieces redeem themselves from a rational chronology and are perceived expanded in an unforeseen hypnotic enjoyment.

Craftily shapeless, they evolve into a tsunami of pleasure, a trance of breaths that drags into a tarantella that blesses the musicians with bigliettoni (banknotes) inserted into the trumpets, as good gypsy tradition commands.

I saw them live in the summer at Villa Ada (RM) during an ethnic music festival where we, already knowing them from the album, went running to see them with a friend, and we even talked with the trumpeter and percussionist for two minutes. Don't ask me how we talked or in what language, but they understood the "lively" compliments just fine.

Romska Orientalna Muzika: Blow gipsy, Blow!