fanfared

as always, i'm pretty late to the party, when it comes to certain music, especially Balkan brass band folk... well, mostly i'm not even at the party, i liked Beirut a lot in the mid-2000's and that was the extent of my knowledge with regards to eastern European/Balkan folk music. and boy did i miss out on a lot!

thanks to the French radio station that i can receive with my tv/internet/phone subscription {FiP, in case you're interested, they can be found on internet as a plug-in thingy as well} which plays just about anything from Radiohead and Led Zeppelin to Classical music and light jazz, via hiphop and R&B, with detours to one-hit wonders, big-band and folk, with no real indication of what will follow, and that usually suits me nicely, i'm introduced to all kinds of brilliant. one of them was this song, by the Fanfare Ciocãrlia, which had me grab my phone to Shazam it immediately. the result took me to their page on Spotify, and there i learnt that they are a 12-piece band, based in Romania and have been around since my second son was born - 1996... well, actually they've been around for many more years, but they were 'discovered' by a German sound engineer then, who was very impressed by their energy and unique take on the music they grew up around, got them to apply for passports and booked a tour though Europe, and the rest was history.

apparently they were loved by the dance/rave scene in the early 2000's, something that i'm finding hard to get, on one hand, but on the other, their high energy, happy music would appeal to a crowd that's into dance and are typically interested in exploring different, new sounds. their music was also used in one of the Borat films {...}

when The Great Pottery Throw Down {a 'lose one contestant every week' style program based around pottery} was still shown on the BBC, i loved the music used, which was a mixture of 60's brit-rock {The Who, Small Faces, the Kinks} and some brass band, and to me it added to the delight that this program was {it's still on, just on a channel that i sadly can't watch}. as opposed to any other contestant show, it will regularly make me feel exuberant with joy and completely inspired to take up pottery again.... there's obviously a huge difference between brass bands from the Balkan and Yorkshire, but the feeling it evokes is oddly similar. the film Brassed Off {underrated, with a glaring cast, like Ewan McGregor and that bloke that went on to play a butler in Downton Abbey}, from 1996, shows how evocative the music can be - either raising spirits or emphasizing depth. 

so, another treasure to unwrap for me... and see if i can find that film somewhere...