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es,” says Ristic, “it’s funny how England has
“Y
played a role in Kal’s career. Meeting you and
then Mike was a major turning point and our
first international tour was across England in
2004. That was before we had a record deal
and when my brother Dushan was still playing violin in the band.
Then he decided to shift to America to pursue a career as a painter
and that gave me total control of Kal. Dushan was much more
concerned with keeping the band acoustic and traditional. I’ve
developed Kal into something beyond that.”
He certainly has: Kal are the first East European band I can
think of who successfully blend the East-West musical dynamic. As
was seen when Emir Kusturica’s No Smoking Orchestra sold out
London’s Barbican with their excruciating mock rock, it is still
metal and prog rock that most East European musicians connect
with when looking West. Ristic dismisses Kusturica as a megaloma-
niac and says it was hearing the likes of Mano Negra and Les
Négresses Vertes back in the early 1990s that set him off on his
journey of discovery.
“I loved those French bands, the way they mixed French tradi-
tional music or Latin music with this punk rock dynamic. That got
me thinking. You see, I was brought up playing and singing tradi-
tional Roma music – my father was a gifted musician – but at the
same time I was going to school with Serb kids and hearing all the
new rock and electronic music coming through. Initially I saw
both music forms as completely alien to each other but hearing
the French bands made me see how all music is connected and if
you are willing to experiment, to play around and try new things,
you can succeed in creating something new.”
Ristic then picks up a guitar and starts singing Manu Chao’s
Hey Mr Bobby, transforming the song from a tribute to Bob Mar-
ley to one about the late Serb Gypsy soul icon Saban Bajramovic.
It’s an appropriate gesture as Saban has influenced Dragan hugely,
he being the first Balkan Gypsy singer to master a narrative singer-
songwriter style comparable to Bob Dylan or Curtis Mayfield in its
lyricism and power.
“Saban was, for me, a really great artist. He remains, I believe,
the biggest representative of both Serb music and Serbian Roma
people. Sure, I like Esma and Boban and those people but Saban was
the greater artist. He created a new style of Romany music. When he
spent those years in prison on Goli Otok (Tito’s gulag-like prison
island where Saban was sent for deserting the Yugoslav Army) he
created something new. It’s impossible to find someone like him
before he started recording.”
“My father knew Saban, played violin with him on occasion and
even wrote a song that Saban recorded. I recall him coming to visit
our home when I was about ten years old. He made a huge impres-
sion and back then he was really on top of his glory.”
Ristic laughs at the memory and then recalls being a teenager
and wanting not to emulate Saban but the late Texan blues-rock
guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan.
“I was so inspired by Stevie Ray. I wanted to play guitar like he
did. I literally wanted to be the best Stevie Ray-style guitarist in
Yugoslavia, but then I heard Les Négresses and I began thinking
differently about making music.”
The Yugoslav civil war – launched by Serbia’s President Milo-
sevic and Croatia’s President Tudjman – devastated and desta-
bilised the region, so ending Dragan’s dreams of making music
Photo: Gregor Rajewsky
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