Many years ago I enjoyed going to all kinds of concerts. Azra in the garden of the Student Cultural Center, Clapton in the fair hall, blues at Mašinac. Concerts of a wider genre spectrum came later. Modern saz in Sarajevo, Roma fast fingers in Skadarlija, sevdah in the Sava center, Mariza on the Sava bank. Young fado in a Lisbon bar. Karma burana under the summer stars on the main square in Vangen. Jazz in the painting studio in Aachen. Vlatko Stefanovski in Nis. A saxophonist in the Paris metro. An accordionist in the Berlin subway. The sound of a didjaridoo on a quay in Oslo. Dervish song in Istanbul. French string players interpret Schoenberg's Quartet in D minor for two violins, viola and cello, opus 7 in the Regensburg theater. Esma Redžepova at the Cologne Philharmonic one summer, Beethoven symphonies at the same place on the last day of another year. Čoček on New Year's Eve in Skopje.
Music is the comforter of life. It is believed that at our very beginnings it was in unity with dance and singing. I could feel some of that this July. I describe three such experiences.
Una Saga Serbica
If choreographer Svetozar Krstić hadn't come up with the idea to form a dance troupe 20 years ago, I wouldn't have been sitting that evening in the National Theater in Leskovac, whose cooling device is not designed for outside plus forty. If I haven't already seen the first spectacular performance of this troupe in the Sava Center in 2013, I can experience it on a smaller stage 11 years later. Eight couples will play "Rhapsody". It is about modernized folk dances of the Balkans. The folklore starting point has been redesigned – costumes, music and steps. And lighting effects have been added.
This performance was actually the most visually attractive part of this year's Strings festival, which brings top artists to the hot south of Serbia for the twelfth time in the middle of summer.
The very combination of familiar elements is interesting. Elements of ballet are incorporated into the classical "entanglements" with the legs of folk carts. While the troupe would regularly change clothes behind the scenes for the next point, one couple would entertain the audience with their dance.
The costumes, as well as the music, were quotes from folk originals. And while the costume was devoid of ethno-national recognition, because the costume designers with postmodern arbitrariness took everything they needed to shape the basic idea, the music followed strong Balkan rhythms, passing them through pop filters.
The audience gave the loudest applause to those pieces that most faithfully followed the original matrix - from "Yellow Quince" to famous Serbian and Macedonian songs.
If anything can be criticized about the extremely well-synchronized and played performance, it might be its overemphasized need to modernize the movement, to "sugarcoat" it with special lighting effects and to turn the original musical background into international pop.
It especially hurt my eyes when some parts of this folklore fairy tale began to look like the visual mythomania of Leibach with theatrics and poses.
Nevertheless, to play this complex program professionally and harmoniously at a temperature that makes even a packed audience, let alone the players, sweat, deserves great respect and even admiration. After all, the success of the playing troupe - it had 200 such performances in front of a total of 100 people - speaks for itself. I am glad to see a successful attempt to repackage our folklore heritage into world clothing. Although I still personally prefer light-footed and breakneck performances by the best cultural and artistic societies with a mix of folk dances.
Uros as Ray
Two evenings later the heat also does not let up. But the stage is outdoors. The garden of the Center for Professional Development in Education is perhaps the best summer music stage in the city. There is some greenery around, and the Veternica river flows behind the wall - it is expected to bring a touch of freshness to the town. The only drawback of this stage is the possibility that the neighbors from the settlement on the other side of the river will unexpectedly organize a party, and put their decibels as guerilla units into concert harmonies.
But not so this time. A hot summer night was perfect for Uroš Perić aka Peri. He is a Slovenian jazz musician, who became known in the world as probably the best living interpreter of the musical legacy of Ray Charles.
Dusk is slowly turning into increasingly dense darkness. Uroš's band takes the stage. Mladen Melanšek plays bass, Peter Rizmal hangs a red guitar around his neck. The drums are played by Gregor Hrovat, the youngest member of the band, who will receive the warmest applause from the gathered younger ladies. Rudi Javornik takes the saxophone and starts a blues standard.
On this saxophonist's website, you can read the musical motto uttered by his role model, the great Stan Getz: "In my opinion, the saxophone is actually a translation of the human voice." The only thing you can do is play the melody. It doesn't matter how complicated it is, it's still a tune."
When Peter Rimzel and Rudi Javornik started calling each other soloing on guitar and saxophone, the evening had already acquired its magic. What kind of band leader is he, when the musicians he gathered are this good?
And the boss - Uroš Perić - comes out after this great introduction and addresses the southerners in Serbian with a distinct southern accent. He didn't learn that at home, because his parents are from Velika Plana and Čačak. "I was born in Slovenia, but I am a native of Serbia," says Uroš. It sounds a bit Monty Pythonesque, but Uroš belongs to the type of excellent entertainers who know how to entertain the audience with a story.
Anyway, Uroš established an immediate and strong connection with the audience and sovereignly guided them through that musical night.
Not only Ray Charles was in the repertoire. Famous things sung by Kris Kristofferson, such as "Help Me Make It Through the Night" or Net King Kol's "For Sentimental Reasons", Uroš left his mark.
His temperament, temperamental behavior at the piano and timbre of his voice are amazingly close to the original that we only know from historical recordings on YouTube.
Uroš bought me when he sang "Đorđa...". In literature, it is called Georgia. "Georgia on my mind". "The song comes from you so sweet and clear, like moonlight through the pines. Other hands reach out to me, other eyes smile gently, I still see in peaceful dreams, the path leads me back to you. Oh, Georgia, I find no peace, only an old, sweet song".
When I couldn't hear the already great Ray Charles in Georgia, where this thing is the unofficial anthem of that American federal state, then fate gave me Uroš's interpretation one night in Leskovac. Somewhere, from the jazz heavens, Hoagie Carmichael, who composed this jazz standard in the thirties of the last century, is watching us along with Ray Charles. Looking over his shoulder are Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong, who first made Georgia famous, only for Ray Charles to make it globally famous again.
Of course, Uroš also performed other timeless things like "Hit The Road Jack" where, due to the lack of female vocalists, he managed to convince the female part of the audience to sing the chorus.
In order not to let things go too sentimentally, near the end of the concert, between songs, Uroš started talking about the barbecue in Leskovac. He claimed that his Slovenian band members had gained weight in two days. And then he added: "Fuck it, we're going to eat some barbecue tonight too!" This caused bursts of laughter.
The energy that night was really good. And from Veternica came a hint of freshness.
Tango forever
Even two days later, the heat did not subside. But in the Leskovac Cultural Center there is something fresher in the concern area itself. This time it's Jovica Ivanović's turn, a musician born in Zvornik and educated in Belgrade and Hanover. He says that he has been playing the accordion since he was seven years old. But he brought a bandoneon to Leskovac.
The instrument is named after the German music pedagogue Heinrich Band. The band gave it its final shape in 1845, but the first such instruments were made before that by the master maker of musical instruments, Karl Fridrih Ulig. Neither of them could have guessed that the bandoneon would experience a victorious campaign on another continent, in distant Argentina. There, at the beginning of the last century, the music of the poor, black regions, the music of sailors and port workers, called tango, married forever with the bandoneon. In Argentina, they say that this instrument is the greatest German invention.
The program that evening was dedicated to the man who refreshed and modernized tango in the 20th century with his bandoneon and compositions - Astor Piacoli. He created world-famous melodies based on tango. Tango nuevo.
Jovica Ivanović, together with violinist David Saramandić, pianist Igor Dražević and Stefan Milojčić on double bass, presented the packed hall with the pure sound of Buenos Aires, the city where the great master Pjacola died in 1992.
One of Piacola's most famous melodies - Biyuya - which in Argentinian slang means "hunt", "hunt" covered the whole evening like a big parenthesis, because it was performed first and once again, at the end, when the audience did not want to just let the musicians go. they go
Wistful pieces like Death of an Angel (La Muerte del Angel), Solitude (Soledad) or dynamic things like Shark (Escualo) awakened in me a longing for Buenos Aires - where I have never been. That's what music can do.
Besides, she's like a time machine. In the last decade of the last century, I bought music records on compact discs. When the family members were not there, I would know to find Piaccola on the long shelf with them. The time spent with his music was an elixir for the soul, and the spices were longing and sensuality with bursts of melancholy.
At the end of the concert in Leskovac, I was grateful to the musicians for giving me back an analog time with a live concert in which music was something bigger and more significant than ourselves.
Bonus video:
