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(This is by nature of both a brief interlude from the account of the Bosnian trip, which I'll get back to Real Soon Now, I promise, and indeed of the #projectBrno posts in general.)
One of innumerable small cultural differences I've noticed in the Slavic world is musical. All the same kind of stuff is popular here, from Tchaikovsky to Taylor Swift. I've heard metal, deep house, country & western, Richard Cheese -- you name it. (Not much goth and bleep, alas -- I think that's more a thing of the German sprachbund.)
But there's another, less familiar kind that enjoys wide popularity: Balkan dance music. I'd never really heard it before. The only thing I'd heard before that it resembles is Klezmer. Think of a fast, bouncing rhythm, minimal drums - bass, a snare, a cymbal. Maybe some accordion or fiddle, but lots of brass. And I do mean lots. Trumpet, tuba, anything staccato -- so not much trombone, which I presume is just too slow. It's leagues away from the sort of Bavarian oompah-band stuff you might think of as continental brass band music. This is frenetic, jazzy, with high twiddly trumpet or cornet playing in the lead.
It's more versatile than you might think, too. I hear covers of western pop, I hear occasional Mariachi-band-type stuff, I hear snatches of classical and traditional ballroom-dance; anything goes.
There were DJs playing an entire evening of this stuff in Kraków last New Year's Eve. Sorry, "Sylvester" - that's what NYE is called here. (That was confusing.) I've also been -- albeit a tad reluctantly -- to a club night of it in Brno.
It really was not my thing. Some of the recognisable covers were fun, but mostly, it was noisy, frantic, samey and repetitive and overall just annoying. Whole evenings of it got old very quickly.
But the local kids love it. Actually, not just the kids. It induces foot-tapping from seven to seventy. It gets nightclub and festival crowds dancing just as effectively as commercial pop hits do, here as everywhere else. But you'll also hear Balkan tunes drifting from cars and bars and homes and picnics on the many hot sunny summer days.
Here in Central Europe, it's exotic, foreign and a bit kitsch. Not so down in the actual Balkans.
( Read more... )
One of innumerable small cultural differences I've noticed in the Slavic world is musical. All the same kind of stuff is popular here, from Tchaikovsky to Taylor Swift. I've heard metal, deep house, country & western, Richard Cheese -- you name it. (Not much goth and bleep, alas -- I think that's more a thing of the German sprachbund.)
But there's another, less familiar kind that enjoys wide popularity: Balkan dance music. I'd never really heard it before. The only thing I'd heard before that it resembles is Klezmer. Think of a fast, bouncing rhythm, minimal drums - bass, a snare, a cymbal. Maybe some accordion or fiddle, but lots of brass. And I do mean lots. Trumpet, tuba, anything staccato -- so not much trombone, which I presume is just too slow. It's leagues away from the sort of Bavarian oompah-band stuff you might think of as continental brass band music. This is frenetic, jazzy, with high twiddly trumpet or cornet playing in the lead.
It's more versatile than you might think, too. I hear covers of western pop, I hear occasional Mariachi-band-type stuff, I hear snatches of classical and traditional ballroom-dance; anything goes.
There were DJs playing an entire evening of this stuff in Kraków last New Year's Eve. Sorry, "Sylvester" - that's what NYE is called here. (That was confusing.) I've also been -- albeit a tad reluctantly -- to a club night of it in Brno.
It really was not my thing. Some of the recognisable covers were fun, but mostly, it was noisy, frantic, samey and repetitive and overall just annoying. Whole evenings of it got old very quickly.
But the local kids love it. Actually, not just the kids. It induces foot-tapping from seven to seventy. It gets nightclub and festival crowds dancing just as effectively as commercial pop hits do, here as everywhere else. But you'll also hear Balkan tunes drifting from cars and bars and homes and picnics on the many hot sunny summer days.
Here in Central Europe, it's exotic, foreign and a bit kitsch. Not so down in the actual Balkans.
( Read more... )
