Joe Karrman penned this review.
For many years composers from all over the world have been inspired by the traditional music of the Balkans and Eastern Europe. The Vasilic Nenad Balkan Band, led by Bass player Nenad himself, have taken a leaf from Bela Bartoks’ book and collected a bunch of traditional tunes and folk songs from Serbia, Vojvodina, Kosovo and Bosnia, and transformed them using an improvised jazz template, which on paper may sound suspect, but it really does work. According to the band’s very well done Web site, “[t]his project is a result of 5 years of research in the Balkan folklore. The idea was to combine traditional and modern jazz with Balkan music in order to create a “new wave of music”. By mixing the jazz form and improvising style with Balkan melodies and rhythm, Vasilic Nenad (a composer as well as a bass player) made a wonderful piece of art with a unique sound, vibe and concept.”
While Nenad (who hails from Nis, Southern Serbia) plays bass and flute, he has surrounded himself with some top notch players, including Austrian born Klemens Pliem on tenor and soprano sax and Pradrag Peric on percussion and gotch.
The opening track “Senir Moj” reminds me of some of Miles Davis’s “Kind Of Blue”. And on the moody “Seidefu Majka Budjase”, the great Dexter Gordon comes to mind as Pliem’s sax floats wearily over the muted backing.
While the intrinsic melodies of some of these songs remain intact, Stefan Heckel (piano) and Andjelko Stupar (drums) contribute wonderful improvisational treatments, helping take the music into a totally different arena. Using these traditional tunes from the former Yugoslavian countries may offend as many purists of Baltic folk music as it thrills, but such is the price every musician must pay when they decide to leave their own mark on traditional music, regardless of how much respect they have for the music.
(Origin, 1996)
