Reinforcing the now well-established link between the
Festival and the surrounding region, the audience will once again
be offered an aperitif by local wine producers.
FANFARA
TIRANA
Vocalist: Hysni (Niko)
Zela Balkan
Passions
TORRECHIARA FESTIVAL
2008
The thirteenth season of the Torrechiara Renata
Tebaldi Festival closes characteristically in party mood, very energetically.
Albania is no longer the mysterious land just beyond
the garden fence which it used to be for many decades. Nowadays it
can be considered a neighbour with whom one has daily, often contradictory
but increasingly “normal” contact. So let’s begin to get to know each
other better and music can surely help us take another step in this
direction.
Fanfara Tirana is
the most exuberant new act in the panorama of Balkan bands from which
it distinguishes itself by means of a more articulate musical language,
based on an insistent melodic path led by alto sax, clarinet, trumpet
and tenor sax which draws in the other instruments. Their concerts
have a unique impact, an onslaught with one split rhythm following
another just as we would expect from a Balkan group, and the “simpler”
2/4 Kosovan and northern Albanian rhythms which could be compared
with middle European polkas if they didn’t seem bitten by a much more
Mediterranean tarantula.
These extraordinary musicians, indomitable on stage
as in real life, conquer and “even make the dead dance” as their admirers
like to put it. Sax, trumpets, clarinets and percussion chase each
other in convulsive crescendos and above them all, the extraordinary
voice of Hysni (Niko) Zela, a true star of Balkan music, who
sings songs of love with unbridled rhythms and fiery words.
The spirit and energy of Fanfara Tirana are well
expressed on their album Albanian Wedding - Brass Explosion,
a musical depiction of the festive uproar of an Albanian wedding:
dance rhythms all day and well into the night to celebrate the
joie de vivre typical of a land which has always straddled the
cultures of both east and west and where, even today, orthodox Catholics
and Muslims live together without too many problems.
In Fanfara Tirana’s repertoire the traditional
themes of the marriage celebrations are superimposed on the bewitching
Balkan and oriental environments. “The infinite sadness of the lament
for clarinet just throws you into infinite gloominess between the
dark waves of the lower Adriatic and the harsh mountains of southern
Albania and tells you of lost loves, but as soon as the rest of the
band joins in again you discover an extraordinary band in front of
you, the most beautiful in the whole Balkan peninsula”.
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