root salad f20 Besh o droM


Dance music in the new traditional Hungarian way for over a decade. Andrew Cronshaw meets a thrilling band.


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ince Hungarian band Besh o droM came together in 1999 there’s been a lot of it about: bands and DJs from outside the Balkans making


music inspired by the alluring rhythms and energy of Balkan and Roma music, particularly the partying drive of wedding bands. Ironic really, that this boom in the music abroad coincided with the great decline in wedding work for the Balkan bands themselves. (Victor Lilov, manager of Bulgarian wedding- band leader Ivo Papasov, puts that down to people in the Balkans having access to a wider range of consumer goods since the demise of communism; back when there wasn’t much choice, they saved their money and spent it on weddings.)


Hungary, immediately to the Balkans’ north, has of course many connections his- torically and in the present day with the people and musics of its southerly neigh- bours. “What is really interesting for me is, as information today spreads much faster and is easier to get, to find on YouTube or wherever, that the musicians of these coun- tries watch each other, and react to each other’s stuff,” Besh o droM’s leader Gergely Barcza tells me. “Like when I hear a Roma- nian tune, a manele tune, in a bhangra style, and then they do it in India, and then again back to Romania but they put in some reggaeton, because it’s the same rhythm, plus some of the Turkish influence that’s been there since the Ottoman days. That’s something I like very much.”


We’re sitting outside one of those ornate Spiegeltents that make characterful venues at events throughout Europe, after the band’s show for Bath Fringe Festival, their last on a short British tour. This isn’t


Besh o droM’s first time in the UK, but earli- er visits, including Womad 2009, were one- offs, and it seemed much of the Bath audi- ence had no idea what to expect. But they were soon swept up in the energy whipped up by Gergely’s alto sax, soaring breathy kaval and electronic EWI, with Roma accordeonist, alto saxist and clarinettist Vil- mos Seres, plus guitar, bass and drums, and occasional vocals from Bori Magyar. (The band’s first female singer, until 2005, was Ági Szalóki; Bori joined in 2007.)


There are several substitutions and absences on this trip. Gergely’s co- founders, singer and percussionist Ádám Pettik, a strong vocal and fronting pres- ence in the full band, and guitarist Attila Sidoo, couldn’t come, and the problem of air travel with a big, heavy pedal cim- balom has meant leaving cimbalist József Csurkulya back home.


Even reduced from octet to sextet they make the whirling, dance-thrilling Besh o droM sound, with a particular zip coming from Gergely’s use of the Akai EWI (Electronic Wind Instrument), one of the several blown-reed controllers for synth invented in the late 20th century. I’ve never heard one used to greater and more natural effect. In his hands it’s no pedestri- an keyboard-alternative but a true and expressive musical instrument, leading the fastest Balkan scampering in sax style while simultaneously able at the touch of the thumb-rollers on the back of its rough- ly clarinet-sized body to zoom through the octaves, plunge into deep bubbling bass depths or soar into bat-frequencies. He tells me he finds it a more responsive instrument than his sax. The EWI is also handy for the occasional unobtrusive trig-


gering of percussion sounds, and he subtly brings extra clout to some of his sax lines with touches on the footswitches of a har- moniser. Some write-ups have assumed there’s a keyboardist, but Gergely’s elec- tronics are much more integral to the energy and melody than that would be.


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Besh o droM means ‘Ride The road’ in the Lovari dialect of Romani, with implica- tions of ‘Follow your own path’ or ‘Get on with it!’. Gergely asks me to make sure to write the name with capital B and M. Why? “I just like it like that!”


he band doesn’t restrict its sources to the Balkans, and isn’t trying to be Balkan or Roma; it plays what excites its members, and much about Balkan music does that, together with influences from elsewhere including of course Hungary. Gergely has travelled throughout the Balkans and beyond, but the band’s repertoire isn’t learnt that way; it’s picked up from recordings, and he’s punctilious in crediting where the tunes come from.


“Travelling is mainly for enjoyment, and to catch the vibe, and see musicians live. In Kosovo I was amazed by the wide range of music they have there. And that modern style, I love that. In Moldova it was interesting to see the interaction between the three cultures in the villages. I spent half a year in India, with my four children and my wife. I was really impressed of course by the rhythms and all the music they have there in Kerala. But I don’t go to find music to play; we have a lot of music, we have friends who have huge collec- tions, a hundred gigabytes of music, folk music, traditional folk music.”


“In the Balkans they still play the music, it’s a living tradition. They may play it on synthesisers and electronic drums, and drumkit, but it’s the same, or almost the same, kind of traditional music. I like it very much. But I don’t lis- ten much to western-style electronic Balkan music.”


You mean what the western DJs do? “Yes. I like it when they add technolo- gy, add ideas, good ideas, but I can’t stand when they don’t add anything, just take whole ideas and add some claps. But I’m happy that Balkan music is played in discos, because it’s really good and has to be played wherever music is played.”


www.beshodrom.hu F


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