Tales and Songs from Weddings and Funerals

What is Tales and Songs from Weddings and Funerals?

This is the name of the most recent album by Goran Bregovic.

"His music marries sounds of a gypsy brass band with traditional Bulgarian polyphonies, those of a guitar and traditional percussion with a curious rock accent…. All against a background of a bedevilled string orchestra and deep sonorities of a male choir, creating music that our soul recognises instinctively and the body greets with an irresistible urge to dance."

When I was in Italy, during the May 1st party in which Slovenia joined the European Union, I, along with my boyfriend and my relatives from the area, headed to a village called Goriza that straddled the boarder to hear Bregovic play. There were tens of thousands of people packed into this tiny square where just weeks before a barbed-wire fence had separated Slovenia from Italy. I wasn’t entirely sure what we were in for as we stood shoulder to should with people of all ages. A cool breeze was blowing making me wish I had brought a sweater. Smoke from cigars and cigarettes could be seen in the beams of the spot lights pointed at the stage, their smells both sweet and bitter. As we waited we listened to all these people talk - different languages from Croatian to Slovenian and of course Italian; but when the first few notes of music hit the air there was silence from the crowd. Time passed without my noticing by the end of the first hour I was screaming and cheering along with everyone else even though I had no idea what any of the lyrics meant. The music alternated between music that would have everyone dancing in their one-foot square space to music that was so beautiful and haunting you would get goose bumps. The night seemed to go on forever long after my legs and back had cramped from standing, after the last song had ended people kept clapping and cheering. Bregovic returned to the stage and spoke, my cousin translated for me “you don’t want to go home? All right we’ll then we will start from the beginning again.” With that the orchestra and singers tromped back on stage and they started again playing for another 45-minutes.

The popularity of Bregovic in the Balkans and throughout Eastern Europe would easily rival any star here in North America. The entire event was powerful – standing on a mosaic to commemorate Slovenia’s joining the E.U. and listening to the culture of the Balkans.

posted by Angela @ 5:08 p.m.