GYPSY MUSIC IN SYDNEY

BY AMELIA GROOM

As is often the case with people living on the margins of society, the nomadic gypsies of Eastern Europe have, over the last few centuries, had a huge impact on the musical traditions of the region. A board term that encompasses many varied regions, ‘gypsy music’ often entails huge ensembles with varied string, brass and percussive instruments accompanying the human voice, and is best experienced live. In recent years a global groundswell of attention for gypsy and Balkan music has slowly built up, and coming up in Sydney are a number of great opportunities to get a taste of it live.

In October, Bosnian composer Goran Bregovic will be performing his album Tales & Songs for Weddings & Funerals, with a 37-piece ensemble, at the Opera House – presented in association with Melbourne International Arts Festival.

Sitting somewhere between an unwavering passion for his classical homeland traditions and the rebellion of punk rock, Bregovic has been packing Europe’s most prestigious concert halls for the most part of the last decade. He is lauded as much for his symphonic film scores (including Emir Kusturica’s Time of the Gypsies, Arizona Dream and Underground) as his pop and world music collaborations (from Iggy Pop to Cesaria Evora).

For over ten years after he abandoned pure rock in 1985, Bregovic’s music had never been performed live. In 1995, with a band of ten traditional musicians, a choir of 50 singers and a symphony orchestra, he undertook a series of mega-concerts in Greece and Sweden followed by an enormous concert given in October at the Forest National of Brussels for an audience of 7500. The following year he did very few concerts, as the idea of 120 performers on stage scared even the most enthusiastic promoters. He then reduced the group to 50 musicians and undertook triumphal tours throughout Europe.

Bregovic achieves exhilarating energy performing with an all-male choir from Belgrade, female Bulgarian throat singers, a Polish string orchestra and his personal nine-piece brass Wedding and Funeral Orchestra. In Tales & Songs from Weddings & Funerals, he presents a range of musicians playing his various musical styles – from tango and reggae to gypsy brass band music.

For a more traditional gypsy concert, Antal Szalai, considered one of the best gypsy violin soloist in the world, is returning to Australia with his gypsy band (pictured here) for a sixth tour, coinciding with their new album release.

Szalai comes from a Hungarian family of gypsy musicians and studied the violin at the Bela Bartok Conservatory of Music in Hungary. In 1967 he joined the Honved Ensemble, a musical organisation which comprises a symphonic orchestra, a folk dance troupe, a choir and a gypsy orchestra; and he became leader of the Hungarian Gypsy Orchestra in 1969.

With over 80 performances scheduled nationally, for the next fortnight Szalai and his gypsy band are playing numerous gigs all over Sydney, including the Ashfield Polish Club, Riverside Theatre in Parramatta, the Austrian Club in Frenches Forest, Cremorne Orpheum Theatre, Strathfield Russian Club, Slide Nightclub in Darlinghurst, The Clarendon in Katoomba and the Hakoah Club in Bondi. Their repertoire consists of Hungarian Csardas music, classical pieces the likes of Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody, Brahms’ Hungarian Dances, pieces from the members of the Strauss family, and traditional Hungarian rural folk music.

Last weekend, Uber Lingua (a Melbourne crew who run club nights and promote trans-cultural music from all corners of the globe) hosted a party at The Abercrombie Hotel called the Sydney Gypsy & Balkan Bash, for the second time this year. Crowds showed up in their finest Eastern European garb and enjoyed a Slovakian BBQ while watching the electronic gypsy minstrel four-piece, The Gypsy Dub Sound System. The night also featured sets from Melbourne DJ Russian Disko; Klezmer quartet The Ticklers, and Macedonian DJ and MC Vulk Makedonski, who raps in his mother tongue and plays everything from traditional music to Mak Rap.

Judging by the enthusiastic reception from the crowd on the night, it’s not just the appreciation of traditional Balkan music that’s on the up, but also modern takes and new directions. Stay tuned.