Balkan Invasion was funded by a grant from Visiting Arts Creative Collaborations in Music Awards. The following is the Project Description, as written by Project manager Mikel Krumins:
Project Description
The Balkan Exchange Project is a collaborative residency organised by Firefly International and The Forest Arts space in Edinburgh, involving contemporary musicians living and working in Scotland and Bosnia Herzegovina.
The Exchange will offer 4 musicians from Bosnia Herzegovina the chance to travel to Scotland for the first time to collaborate with 4 contemporary Scottish bands. They’ll create, record and perform a series of new pieces focusing directly on issues of nationality, nationalism, cultural identity, xenophobia and stereotyping.
Project Aims
The Balkan Exchange Project will widen the creative and cultural boundaries of its participants and their audiences, introducing them to a broader range of musical practice and experience.
History
Firefly was set up in 1998 to encourage reconciliation and communication among young people living in separated areas of Brcko, Bosnia Herzegovina, and to develop understanding and tolerance between people of different backgrounds and nationalities. We have always been aware that focusing on what divides groups can often serve to emphasise the division. Instead, we focus on their shared culture, interests and values. Once links are formed, it’s easier to then focus on political and social problems between groups or ethnicities, with participants as a united group that have already worked together.
Project Background
In 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2005 Firefly, in conjunction with their UK partner organisation, The Forest Arts Space in Edinburgh, arranged for groups of contemporary Scottish based artists and musicians to tour the former Yugoslavia, co-ordinating a series of live collaborative performances, visual art exhibitions and youth workshops. Over the course of these visits, which included shows in Brcko, Belgrade, Banja Luka and the Mostar International Festival Of Culture, our Organisation developed strong links with a number of contemporary musicians living and working in the region.
The Balkan Exchange Project 2006 is our opportunity to fully realise the potential for innovation and originality shown during these visits.
Host Venue Details
The Balkan Exchange Project will last from the 10th to the 30th of April 2006 and will take place in a variety of venues in Edinburgh and Glasgow, primarily The Forest Arts Space In Edinburgh. The Forest is a not-for-profit, voluntary run arts space and community café with fully equipped live music rehearsal facilities and space to perform free access live events in the heart of Edinburgh. The café attracts hundreds of people each month from passers-by, international visitors and local inhabitants. The Forest has a five-year history in Edinburgh of hosting local, national and international musicians and artists, openly encouraging local people to collaborate with its visitors and guests. Aside from helping to organise previous Bosnia Herzegovinan exchange projects with Firefly, the Forest also co-ordinated two Action Projects for this years World Youth Congress (www.scotland2005.org).
Participants
The bands and musicians have all been selected because of their eclectic nature and their experience in cross cultural collaboration. Their styles’ cover a wide range of musical genres and influences from hip hop, electronica, Sevdah and Scottish folk, to contemporary Rock and alternative independent music.
The Jimmy Joyce Rolls Royce Band
Founded: Gradacac, Bosnia Herzegovina, December 2004)
From Bosnia Herzegovina, The Jimmy Joyce Rolls Royce Band consists of 4 members, Edina Vosanovic (vocals and keyboards), Sanjin Vosanovic (bass), Edo Soldin (guitar) and Edin Muftic (accordion, piano, vocals and guitar). They have been composing original material for two years and by looking toward ethno music for influence rather than written rule, they are keen to explore a multitude of different styles. Musicians in Germany, Italy and the USA have previewed their music with positive effect but as yet they have not had the chance to play together outside their home country due to the difficult situation in which they live.
Formed in December 2004, the band met through mutual friends to record a demo. They have received offers to perform at live concerts in Bosnia but are currently trying to find a drummer and complete a fuller range of songs before accepting any offers. Their music has elements of jazz, ethno, funk and rock, vocal and instrumental.
danseizure
Daniel Gorman, originally from Dublin, Ireland, has been working as an experimental musician within Edinburgh for a number of years, generally using computers and electronics in order to produce experimental sounds and rhythms. In 2004 he was awarded a Grant from the Scottish Arts Council to work inside the Teufelsberg Listening Post in Berlin. It was there that he discovered the possibilities of using alternative methods to make abstract compositions, and how the Teufelsberg’s original constructed purpose (to listen) can be reversed into the production of, rather than the absorption of, sound. For the past year he has worked in Bosnia Herzegovina as Director of Firefly International, organising exchange projects and youth workshops.
The Abdominal Showmen
Winners of the 2005 PRS and Fopp Unsigned Awards, The Abdominal Showmen have performed extensively in venues across the UK since 2003. Three of their members were closely involved in both the 2003 and 2005 Firefly Bosnia Herzegovina Exchange projects and have worked collaboratively with a wide variety of musicians from around the globe, including performers from Paris and New York. Their music combines elements of Rap music, Scottish poetry, hard funk and electro and involves Mikel Krumins as lead vocalist, Jake Denaji on bass guitar, Emma Bowen on Keyboards, Derek McKenzie on guitar and Thomas Macgregor on drums.
Orkestra Del Sol
Orkestra Del Sol is an 11-piece brass, woodwind and percussion band. They play a wide range of styles including gypsy polkas, calypsos and waltzes, incorporating Balkan Folk music (One of their members has previously toured Bosnia and Romania). Happily un-amplified, they process, sing, interact and can play on stage or in field with a line up that includes Trumpet, alto and tenor saxes, trombone, bassoon, oboe, clarinet, violin, accordion, percussion and vocals. They have performed across the UK and Ireland including the Glastonbury Festival and Jazz on a Summers Day at the Southbank in London.
For examples of Orkestra del Sol’s music please visit: http://www.marcusbritton.com/webpages/bands_orkestra_sol.htm
Lis Murphy
Youth Work Shop Coordinator
Currently officer of an award winning project ‘engaging refugees & asylum seekers’ at Salford Museum & Art Gallery in Manchester, Lis is an experienced musician who has had a strong connection with the Balkans since 1999. She began her work there as a volunteer with Firefly and went on to work for War Child Amsterdam, supervising and coordinating a music project and training programme for local artists working in schools in and around Mostar. Whilst living in Mostar, Lis studied with traditional sevdah singer Teo Krilic and has continued to perform in the UK with local and Bosnian musicians at various festivals. Her youth and education work includes projects with musicians from the LSO, the Halle, Camerata, Bosnian Supplementary School and Burnley Youth Theatre, using folk songs and contemporary music to inspire and create new songs. She is very interested in developing work around identity and conflict resolution and speaks serbo-croat.
New Music
All of the participants have experience in some form or another with their own traditional forms of music. We believe that Many of our contemporary genres share elements that are commonly linked with the more established forms of music such as that of traditional folk. Stories told over beats by rappers in hip hop music can be directly compared with the way in which folk singers tell their tales over the rhythm of their guitars and at times can share the same universal themes. This links the rapper to a deeper aural tradition rather than simply communicating a temporary message of their present day surroundings. As with hip hop, Electronic music has developed a massive following across Europe. With the arrival of collaborative music making across the internet, the concept of song ownership has become more nondescript. In folk music a song can be played by many different musicians in many different forms and at different points in time and by embracing this idea Electronic music has developed into a form of expression that has come to define our modern technological society.
As our concept of specific genres begin to merge, with more and more musicians hailing their expression as a fusion of more than one type of music, the Balkan Exchange project will attempt to create a sound that traverses these boundaries, offering a reference point for both modern and traditional forms of music. For example, by combining the vocals of Edina Vosanovic’s experience in her local Bosnian women’s choir and the electronic music of danseizure with Donnie Nicholson on bag pipes and rapping from The Abdominal Showmen, the outcome will highlight the connections that still exist between past and present while at the same time creating a sound that is beyond the preconceptions of contemporary fusion
Over the course of the first week the participants will experiment with different combinations until they are agreed on suitable arrangements for each of the final recordings. Once divided into their own groups they will work on a series of new compositions to be recorded in the second week. Although the time frame for this project is limited we are confident that all of the musicians are accomplished to a degree that the process of collaboration will be easily dealt with. In addition we have developed good relationships with the studio that will oversee the final recordings. This will ensure that there are no difficulties when it comes to laying down the final tracks.
Professional Development
As all the participants are committed musicians, the opportunity to work on a project of this nature is a great opportunity to experiment with new techniques and patterns for making music, learning from each other new ways of approaching their creative practice.
The work of the Jimmy Joyce Rolls Royce Band has up until now been limited, due to their circumstances, to practice and home made recordings. If awarded this opportunity they will be able to return to Bosnia having performed three live shows, gained experience in a professional recording studio and have a professionally recorded CD to help promote themselves back in their home country. According to the band this would give them a much needed advantage when approaching venues and record labels in the future. The honorarium they would receive in return for working on this project amounts to almost 2 months wages in Bosnia and would allow them the spare time they need to travel and compose new material based on their experiences in the UK. The project will also offer them the experience of travelling to a new country to observe different ways of working, a process which is vital to the creative development of any artist. In addition they would also gain the experience of taking part in a cross-cultural collaborative project as a band, receiving the documentation required to co-ordinate subsequent exchange projects (In 2007 they plan to bring 5 of the musicians they will work with in the UK to Serbia to perform with them as part of Serbia’s Exit Festival, the biggest music festival in the Balkan region).
The UK participants will reap similar rewards. The benefits of taking part in such a project will offer them the chance to continue to explore new methods of music making after the project has finished. By combining their previous experience with what they will have learnt from working with each other they will be able to continue to improve their abilities to collaborate when working with other musicians in future projects. The CD produced as part of the project will also offer them the documentation they need when applying for future collaboration projects and a means to promote themselves.