Music in the blood

Although Prince-of-the-Crow in Basel was placed better than Wolf-of-Serbia in Florida and in Moscow, last week the music still did not live on "Eurovision Song". Guitar Art Festival is used to shining in the dark, for him the beating heart of the best music pulses with full force outside of TV, charts and any Music Week. And again, it came from minorities, disenfranchised, from people who had it more difficult than we do now. And yet they succeeded - they emancipated themselves with their gift and work, they won us over, they fought against the stronger ones. Good music breg roni.

Guitar Art Festival (hereinafter: GAF) and began in one of the darkest and most painful moments in Serbia, in 2000, between the NATO bombing and the fall of Milošević. Taking off from the very bottom of "objective circumstances", over the course of a quarter of a century he has hardened himself through involuntary coincidences at the time of (extraordinary) elections, mass protests, floods... Let's hope that his unwavering quality will lead to a way out and rise again this time. Until then, we will focus on the most popular and biggest concerts of the 26th GAF. It was opened with a spectacular concert by the Rosenberg brothers, whose trio GAF established itself here - they took part in the Festival in 2006 and 2008 (see "Vreme" no. 893) - and in Belgrade they performed outside of it, triumphing every time, and solo guitarist Stochelo also started a super-trio from here. Kings of Strings, with V. Stefanovski and T. Emanuel. He even guested with "Frails" on "Je Suis Folle De Toi", the French version of their catchy "Crazy for You".

GYPSY SWING

At the end of the eighties, the sons of the Dutch Roma/Sinti musician family Rosenberg transcended the limits of their ethnic community and began - discographically and live - to conquer the top gipsy swing. Even as boys they played together, so it's hard to beat the harmony of the virtuoso Stöchel and his uncles, rhythm guitarist Nous'che and double bass player Nonnie. They overtook quite a few musical descendants, relatives and followers of their guitar role model Jean 'Django' Reinhardt (Jean 'Django' Reinhardt, 1910–1953), so it is natural that they are also responsible for the music in the biographical film about this pioneer of European jazz (2017). However, the "Rosenberg Trio" began to expand in 2015, in terms of membership and repertoire, as recorded in the album Family...feat. Mozes and Johnny Rosenberg (Coast Music).

In the packed hall of Kolarč's endowment (tickets 2500-4500 dinars), "La Familia Rosenberg" framed their fast-fingered hour and a half with big band standards "Stompin' At The Savoy" and (for an encore) "Caravan", reminding us that Django started by transposing the riffs of big swing orchestras into his manush-guitar style. The trio was first joined by Stöchel's youngest brother Mozes (b. 1983), whose turn it is now to wear a thin mustache; his sound is a shade more electrified, so his solos seem (and start like that) like organic extensions of Stöchel's. Especially when listening to the Rosenbergs for the first time, let alone live, the entries and duets are astonishingly fast and precise and no less beautiful. Some of Django's classics like "Minor Swing" are inevitable, and Moses' composition "Moseology" (a clear allusion to "Djangology" by Reinhart himself) in a sweeping flight from Charlie Christian to a modern jazz guitarist, makes one think that maybe Django would have sounded like that if he had lived longer/had time for an electric version of his instrument. (Of course, it's different when Moses performs this with his own acoustic trio.)

COUSIN JOHNNY

Sometimes the guests of the "Rosenberg Trio" were singers for rare vocal tracks, but now they are joined by cousin Johnny (b. 1977), a real crooner (crooner) on the Sinatra/Bubble line. So, with a smooth voice, an open/relaxed throat, with some jazzy phrasing, this Rosenberg introduced himself to us through "S Wonderful", and later on Broadway he looked back on the Gershwin tandem in the fast "I Got Rhythm". The young-looking, bespectacled Johnny is also sitting, because he is (was) first a guitarist, so he accepts "selmerica" ​​for the instrumentals, and the rhythm players get a duo. However, his moments include the famous tango "Kiss Of Fire" (unencumbered by the first English version, that is, L. Armstrong's voice) and the lesser known "Nancy (With The Laughing Face)", which Sinatra "adopted" as his daughter. Immaculate intonation and diction, and not at all cold, Johnny Rosenberg deserves all the praise, the kind that the shouted Kurt Elling once received on this same stage, with the fact that gypsy crooner he also emphasizes his attachment to Aznavour.

Following Johnny, the rest of the Rosenbergs easily bypass every kitsch and schlager, and "Speak Softly Love (Godfather Theme)" by N. Rote is an instrumental, the starting point to which fluid improvisations return; they do not live up to the generally accepted, first coda and rhapsody and only then the swinger part. The concert reaches its peak beyond all expectations when the five are joined on stage by tambura player Branko-Bako Jovanović, two nights before his own concert at the Festival. Bako also shone at the 23rd GAF ​​(2022), as a guest of classical guitarist Miroslav Tadić, when they strolled through folk/old city motifs, flamenco and Brazilian points. Now, Jovanović first had an equal role in Stöchel's most famous composition "For Sephora" (for his sister, after five boys), and then they soared... where superb musicianship disappears from the reach of words. As if they had been performing together for years, the lightning-fast unison parts of two and even three instruments alternated at a pace that left the audience breathless, literally. The incredible ease with which constantly new melodic lines emerge, and the obvious enjoyment of the players in their mutual connection somehow had to end, so it was in "Tears", a classic collaboration between Django and violinist Stephane Grapelli in the "Quintette du Hot Club de France"; The Rosenbergs had the opportunity to record that composition and perform it several times live with the great Grapeli. This block and Buck's guest appearance were greeted with a standing ovation, as well as the end of the concert, so "La Familia Rosenberg" returned for an encore to Ellington's "Caravan", with the same enthusiasm as when they still wore colorful shirts.

Bako

photo: wikimedia duskax

In the National Theater (tickets 2500-3500 dinars) Bako Jovanović had his first real solo concert. Born in 1988 in a musical family in Vienna, where he lives, Bako trained as a classical guitarist, and as a tambourine/bass player he won numerous prizes at competitions and festivals in the Balkans and beyond. He collaborated with many singing and instrumental stars, was a special live guest as many times, and his fourth album Tireless wires/Restless Strings (2024, PGP RTS), in collaboration with GAF, should take him to a well-deserved, prominent place in world music, with a clear tradition of his homeland, Serbia. Because Bako is not only a virtuoso on one instrument but on the whole spectrum of stringed instruments, and on top of that he is also a great composer, as evidenced by his previous CD The end of the world/The End Of The World (2016, PGP RTS). Without abandoning the folklore from which he originated, he absorbs other influences primarily through the sound and style of his playing.

The two-hour program started with Buck's solo point on the acoustic guitar, which is yet to be known, and then continued with his trio, eight strings and three brass. In some parts of the concert, the latter provided carefully arranged support, so to speak, sound cushions that the main soloist covered with strums, sometimes even in dialogue with, say, the flute. Jovanović's trio is guitarist and sparring-soloist Djusi Kovač (also good in the vocal "Zbog Tebe mome ubava" by Staniša Stošić), percussionist Milan Paležnica and young double bassist Jesper Nordberg; the latter Swede had a number of excellent solo parts with an in-depth knowledge of Balkan melos. In any composition, Bako bewitches as much with speed as with precision, purity of tone, clarity of every phrase and decoration: he literally lowers audible pearls. At the same time, he sits quietly, says almost nothing between the points and does not drop his five-stringed instrument - typically accompanying, not the usual soloist like prim/bisernica or brac, but the so-called bugaria/contra/tambourine guitar. Tonally, however, Bako "covers" the entire tambura ensemble, and often effortlessly enters the domains of balalaika, bouzouki, mandolin, Portuguese fado guitar... If you weren't watching him at that moment, you wouldn't believe your ears. Musically, to infinity, or imagine the French TGV train cutting through Vienna and continuing to whip through Pannonia.

The instrumental blocks were interrupted by the entrances of the singer Angela Kasani, who, roughly, performed tracks "from Čangalović to 'Vaya Con Dios'", on the theme from Kuma and the audience sang along. It can't even come close to the pastiche of "Pink Martini", for example, but it didn't matter. The crackling instrumentals still raised the temperature in the old building, even the lighting master let the large crystal chandelier and position lamps wink to the beat. A pleasant surprise was "We will sing what our heart knows" (Damir Imamović, for Amira Medunjanin), and one of the best versions of "Djelem đelem", to bring to the end - look! - "Bella Ciao". When it seemed that the announced guest would not appear, guys in black came on stage, with shiny instruments and shoes, and pumped up that tinny sound that turns the Balkans on so much even when it's much worse. This time, with Marko Marković's orchestra, the first-class arrangement and interpretation left enough dynamic range for Bako to be heard as well - violinist Lajko Felix could not always boast of that when he collaborated with Marko's father Boban - as in Marko's trumpet solo it was immediately noticed that he does not live in a ghetto/village but is a world musician. In a white suit, young and modern, a real leader of the orchestra, Marko expertly sang "Ederlezi" at the end - in his native language, with flair, without croaking, so neither the program nor the enthusiastic audience came into conflict with the elite status of the national theater.