A Balkan spring festival and brass band extravaganza is set for Roberts Creek Hall on Saturday night.
Caravan World Rhythms presents this concert featuring Orkestar Slivovica (Vancouver), Orkestar Zirkonium (Seattle), The Bolting Brassicas (Lasqueti Island) and Mazamazing on May 8 at 8:30 p.m.
Ederlezi is a popular traditional folk song of the Roma minority in the Balkans. The song got its name after Ederlezi, which is a spring festival, especially celebrated by Roma people in the Balkans and elsewhere around the region, including Turkey, marking the beginning of spring
Caravan World Rhythms is bringing together some of the top Balkan brass bands in the Pacific Northwest for what promises to be a wild celebration of spring and Romani culture, with music drawing from Eastern European, Roma brass, klezmer, Bollywood soundtracks, Ethiopian jazz, punk, funk, hip hop and other musical idioms.
Headlining this event is the 14-member Orkestar Zirkonium from Seattle. All 14 players share an intense fascination with the radically propulsive music of Fanfare Ciocarlia, Goran Bregovic, Boban Markovic, Kocani Orkestar and Esma Redzepova. The group's repertoire of cathartic dance music features original compositions as well as traditional and pop standards from Bulgaria, Macedonia, Serbia, India, Ethiopia and beyond.
Vancouver's Orkestar Slivovica has become a mainstay of Balkan and Cabaret brass band celebrations. Wandering the streets of Vancouver with battered and ancient instruments, appearing and disappearing into the night and dressed in the highest fashions of your great-grandparent's youth, everything they cross paths with becomes a Balkan wedding dance party.
Lasqueti Island is no stranger to the new wave of Balkan music and has produced its own blend of brash brassness with The Bolting Brassicas. Vancou-ver's Punkish Balkan band, Mazamazing, will also make a cameo appearance.
Tickets are $20, available on-line at www.caravanbc.com or in person at Gaia's Fair Trade Gifts, MELOmania and WindSong Gallery.
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