WITH its coloured glass, mirrors and starry stage backdrop, the Spiegeltent proved the ideal venue for a final August festival fling, the Gypsy Festival. This glimpse of the strength and diversity of gypsy culture from story-telling to music-making w
as a timely reminder of the innovative ways gypsy artists have helped keep traditions thriving into the 21st century.
An initial highlight was the Gypsy Jazz provided by the guitars of UK virtuoso John Etheridge and Australian Dave Blenkhorn evoking the swinging sound of French violinist Stéphane Grappelli, guitarist Django Reinhardt and their seminal Quintette du Hot Club de France.
The very amiable Etheridge with his off-beat laugh and deceptively laid-back body language interspersed pieces such as Coquette, Limehouse Blues and Douce Ambience with anecdotes about Grappelli (with whom he toured) and Reinhardt. He and Blenkhorn swapped leads so effortlessly in pieces like Daphne you had to look closely to see who was playing what.
And while Etheridge was obviously happy with a non-gypsy solo – a piece by South Africa's Abdullah Ibrahim on electric guitar, matched by Blenkhorn with a quietly serenading version of Stardust – the real excitement arose from the ingenious ways both extemporised, pushing the experimental envelope while keeping everything mellow.
Hungarian Roma band Parno Graszt in their first UK appearance blew the roof off the Spiegeltent showing just what a real gypsy group are about, taking us into intense music of weddings, funerals, christenings and every festivity in between. This was very much a family affair, with the eight of them singing while playing guitars, accordion, wooden spoons and electric tamboura and vivaciously dancing, radiating an exuberant energy.
Their singing involved an upfront style with one solo voice joined by another, using vigorous timbric group harmonies for chorus lines. Every tune was underpinned by an amusing instrument consisting of two small battered milk churns being slapped while player István Németh created a constant stream of throaty mouth music like a resonant vocal bass as if he was talking to an animal.
With the two women dressed in traditional long, red, flowing skirts and barefoot, there was a definite feel of the outdoors as they joined the audience in the dancing. There was an unassailable conviction about everything Parno Graszt did, a natural passion that had the whole audience in the palm of their hands. And while one felt slight unease about a final dance that involved a man swinging a stick around a woman so that she had to keep at least one pace ahead, this was a compelling set by one of the best gypsy bands I've seen in a long time.
Paprika Balkanicus took the Balkan part of the Gypsy Festival from the Spiegeltent to the Mela on Saturday night. This five-piece, who come from Romania, Serbia and Slovenia and dress like overgrown schoolboys, subversively re-invent classic middle European evergreens that have been part of the universal musical psyche since the early 20th century.
Their riotous performance placed the great accordions of Milos Milivojevic and Zivorad Nikolic at each side like a musical frame, shifting with understated aplomb from sounding like brooding pianos to whirling barrel organs. Guitarist Vlad Jocic held the middle ground, strumming like mad, his pork pie hat and drainpipe trousers giving him a mischievous air. At his side, balancing the energy of the group and providing quirky chat between pieces, was electric bass player Jozef Secnik (ex Terra Folk).
Balkanicus's repertoire was contrastingly urban in comparison with that of Parno Graszt, including updates of classics like Russia's Kalinka and Moonlight. While they revelled in wringing the emotion out of bittersweet ballads, their czardas, rumbas and whooping circle dances began deceptively slowly, building up through enormous crescendos with everything played at breakneck speed. During this process their musicianship never faltered as they dealt out complex, ricocheting rhythms at a devilish pace.
The star of the show was undoubtedly Romanian Roma Bogdan Vacarescu who, while still young, is a virtuoso violinist who could turn any tune into gypsy fare. For pieces like The Skylark and Tarantella his fingers created running cascades of arpeggios full of vibrato trills, glissando slides and contrasting textures using all the tricks available to reach the highest notes possible before zipping down again.
His technical mastery of various fingering styles made it sound at times as if there were at least two fiddlers, particularly noticeable in a brilliantly dancing Czardas. At the end with the audience circling the Mela garden site, it was obvious that Paprika Balkanicus had set the night afire.
The full article contains 770 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
