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Fanfara Kalashnikov C
ristian takes out a snapshot of a beautiful blonde young woman and shows it around. This is his daughter, who also lives in Berlin in the same run-down Neukölln building as himself. Cristian’s son is also here, and it is with him that he lives. It bothers Cristian that he has to impose on his son and he is seeking a place of his own where he can be a bother to no one. For an elderly man, Cristian is incredi- bly strong and vital. And he has to be. Pounding the strings of his cembalo takes strength and lugging his instrument around the streets of Berlin is a heavy burden. Asked where he plays, he lists off: Ku’damm, Hermann platz, Bergmannstrasse. He is not too familiar with street names and has mainly a visual orientation. It’s a tough life, but it is much better than the life he left in Romania.
“It’s much cheaper here,” he says. “Food is cheaper. I have a pension of one hundred euros a month, but this isn’t enough to live on in Romania.”
The fact is that for the past 100 years – and this has only been accelerated with Capitalism and Romania’s accession into the EU – the traditional jobs of Roma in Romania have been pro- gressively dismantled. Roma were always especially talented in handicrafts. They were chimneysweeps, roof builders, horse traders. But what use do Romanians have for these jobs today? Music for many is the last refuge of the Roma. But capitalism has- n’t been good to the Roma musician. There’s no money for big, extravagant weddings anymore, and for many who lack solid networks in Romania, there is no other choice but to go West. To Paris, Brussels – or Berlin, where they can earn at least five times as much as they could earn in Romania.
Everybody knows the Romanian Roma street musicians in Berlin. They have become part of the Berlin landscape. Often they are met with irritation, sometimes sympathy, and sometimes they are welcomed with open arms, invited to parties and weddings. One group of Roma street musicians who has made it in Berlin is a group of eight brass musicians who go by the name of Fanfara Kalashnikov.
The musicians are between 23 and 32 and all come from the same town of Iasi in western Romania.
“We play just like a Kalashnikov,” says band member Sergiu, “very fast and very precise.”
The first three members of Kalashnikov arrived in 2006. At first they had only tourist visas and had to go back to Romania every three months, and then beginning in 2007 they had the same rights as all Europeans and could stay here on a continual basis. They played in various cities in Germany, but found Berlin the most toler- ant towards street musicians and decided to stay here.
“The police know us too,” says Sergiu. “They pass by us and they say: ‘This is Kalashnikov. Let them be.’”
Kalashnikov combines Latino music with jazz and Balkan music of Boban Markovic and Goran Bregovic. Some years ago they were discovered at Alexanderplatz by a German music pro- ducer and anthropologist, who offered to become their manager.
“We started from scratch and we started to do gigs for half an hour for one hundred euros,” says Sergiu, “And today we can get up to two thousand euros for a show. We get requests from France, from Spain, from Switzerland, from all over Europe.”
“There are very few bands like us,” says manager Clemens Grün. “I sometimes say this is punk music without guitars. Boom,
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