KOCANI ORKESTAR feat. Naat Veliov
Gypsy Folies

Fy 8063


Dunya Records
Macedonia

 

After the critically acclaimed Cigance comes a new chapter in the NAAT VELIOV story. Raised among the sounds of a musical family, VELIOV right from the start showed a marked propensity for a career as a musician and every soon took upon his young shoulders the responsibility of carrying forth a weighty tradition. The town of Kocani in Macedonia lies near the capital Skopje but a glimpse at VELIOV's genealogy reveals Turkish origins, which explains why the tunes he plays combine elements culled from all over the whole Balkan region and not merely the, albeit rich, Macedonian tradition.

In the transmission of the repertory from father to sun, typical of the great gypsy musical families, VELIOV, thanks to his great talent and sensibility, has been able to introduce a whole series of new stylistic flourishes, giving a new lease of life to the old town brass band style typical of Eastern Europe and launching the Kocani Orkestar into the stratosphere of brass and wind music.

Striking in VELIOV and his musicians is the ability to fuse virtuoso playing and technical excellence with great depth of understanding and sensibility towards the music itself. One of the reasons for this no doubt lies in the fact that despite VELIOV's considerable international fame both in music and cinema (he has been a frequent collaborator on the soundtracks of Emir Kusturica's films) he has continued to play in his home town, turning out for all those occasions of daily life (weddings, baptisms, funerals, circumcision days) for whom a musical accompaniment is deemed essential.

Such occasions have no doubt provided a great incentive for VELIOV to keep pace with the times following the developments and changes in musical taste of his native community and to seek out new forms to give to the heterogeneous musical material he has worked with as a band leader.

On GypsyFolies VELIOV's sonic palette has grown considerably, adding to the gypsy tradition rhythms typical of the middle east and India and injecting the music with contemporary sonorities. The disc moves through the complex rhythmic structures of a an extremely diverse selection of Kolo, oro and cacak showcasing the KOCANI ORKESTAR in the splendour of their creative maturity.