The Barcelona Gipsy Balkan Orchestra returns to its Christmas event to celebrate Orthodox New Year's Eve this Saturday with its music, daughter of the tradition of Eastern Europe, from the Czech Republic to Turkey, from Jewish to gypsy culture, a musical continent that will meet this Saturday in room 2 of the Jamboree (10:30 p.m.) around the festive music of the Barcelona group. “We are not going to play Christmas carols,” says Ivan Kovacevic, founder and double bassist of the group, laughing.
The Balkan festival (also known as BGKO by its initials) is the meeting point for Orthodox communities who want to celebrate their New Year's Eve in Barcelona. Romanians, Bulgarians, Slovenes, Serbians and lovers of Balkan music in general will gather to wish each other a happy new year when they ring 12 bells to the rhythm of the Orchestra's extensive repertoire, which will present its seventh studio album back in March. . At the moment it is titled a brief 7, chosen with the desire to unify languages as they have done in previous works, where Esperanto has served as a common flag to unite the multiple languages of a “politically conflictive, and therefore very rich” area. on a cultural and musical level.”
“For the first time, sung songs that we have written will appear,” explains Kovacevic, “which complicates things even more.” Each of the previous albums had at least five languages, but composing them in their entirety has represented a new challenge for the band, accustomed on the other hand to breaking rocks to find new compositions with which to feed the repertoire. “I grew up with this music in the Balkans, but when push comes to shove, everyone has brought some idea,” Kovacevic highlights of his bandmates. “Then we worked on it a lot, we investigated its origins and each one contributes their musical background, which is very different. We have classical musicians, others who come from techno, reggae, jazz, I myself have always dedicated myself to music of black origin, like blues.”
For this new album they will once again have the voice of the Italian Margherita Abita, who replaced Sandra Sangaio in 2019, accompanied by accordions, violins, tambourines and clarinets. A sound that they pick up in Balkan music jams where they try new songs and enrich themselves on trips to the East. “There are many people in Serbia or Romania who take pride in explaining their tradition, their roots, their music, and we take advantage of it mercilessly,” a custom that at the same time serves to revitalize the culture. "Until two or three decades ago, traditional music was kept in the drawer, imagine if blacks in the US had done the same with jazz and blues." The appearance of bands that have turned this music into world music has given a second life to the tradition.
This multiplicity of musical languages characterizes the Barcelona group from its origins in the Raval jams, such as that of the extinct venue Arco de la Virgen – where the Gipsy Balkan Orchestra was born in 2012 –, until today, when only two of its members remain. founders members. “More than a band, it is a family that changes, a living organism, not everyone can endure so many trips,” a nomadic life that has taken them to more than 30 countries, as much or more sought after abroad than in their own country. home. “In Spain there has not been the boom in Balkan music that countries like France or Italy have had,” says Kovacevic, who has lived in Barcelona for 20 years. But "between two or three bands we have managed to enhance the sound of the Balkans."
