root salad f18 Fanfare v. TGU
Fanfare Tirana’s Kabatronicsproject with Transglobal Underground was a fine thing. Jamie Renton hears how.
S
o let me get this straight… a collaboration between the UK’s longstanding gurus of global dance grooves and the brass ensemble of the Albanian army? Pull the other one, it’s got bells on! Only, as it turns out, that wasn’t a joke after all. Transglobal Underground really have collaborated with Albanian military brass blasters Fanfara Tirana and the resulting racket is something to hearken to.
The first fruits of this were to be
found on Kabatronics (World Village), last year’s assured and multifaceted album, which reached out beyond the expected brass ’n’ beats to take in soul-searing Alba- nian folk singing, Caribbean rhyming, sitar and Spaghetti Western twanginess. Last winter Fanfara Tirana came over to the UK to join the Transglobals for a gig at the Scala in central London’s less than salubri- ous Kings Cross and while the soundcheck was happening, I grabbed a few minutes with FT’s garrulous and friendly Albanian- born, Italian-based manager Olsi Sulejamni to get the lowdown on this unlikeliest of musical showdowns.
When Olsi chanced upon FT back in the early noughties they were leading a double life, working as part of the march- ing band of the Albanian army in the week, then goofing off to whoop it up playing at weddings and parties come the weekend, thus combining the formal training required by the former with the
Whipping ‘em up at Womex 2013
fiery playing and deep knowledge of tra- ditional music needed for the latter.
Having released one album of straight-up brassy Albanian sounds, 2007’s Albanian Wedding: Brass Explosion (Piran- ha), Olsi and the band decided to add a lit- tle something extra to the mix. The origi- nal plan was to chuck in some percussion and a bit of mixing. Turkey’s kings of ethno-psychedelia Baba Zula (fR300) were initially called upon, the links between Albanian and Turkish sounds being there for all to hear, but they were busy releas- ing their own album. In the meantime Olsi sent some tracks over to Transglobal. “They came back with Qaj Maro that was the first track that they put their hand to,” he tells me. This was the dense, hypnotic tune that was to become the album’s opener. “I just said ‘wow!’ because they were so respectful. They added a little bit of dub on it, but dub is already in Albanian music, especially in the south Albanian percussion. But this was another kind of dub, the dub of the underground of Lon- don. They didn’t do much on it, but they did what was needed.”
More tracks were sent Transglobal’s
way, while Tirana were inspired to record some new ones. “We started calling the album ‘The Yoyo Album’ because of this up and down from North and South Europe.” First Transglobal were just going to get a credit, then it was to be billed as ‘Fanfara Tirana with Transglobal Under-
ground’, but after all the file sharing, Dropboxing and general musical yo-yoing, everyone agreed that ‘Fanfara Tirana meets Transglobal Underground’ was the only way to go.
I wondered how much the finished T
Transglobal-ised tracks differed from Fan- fara Tirana’s original, un-mucked-about- with recordings. “Transglobal Under- ground were really careful when putting their hands into this mishmash, they were respectful of the original ideas at all times and so mostly the melodies were not changed a lot. But the structure was some- times changed. This album is mainly the Albanians’ ideas, but if we do another one, then maybe that will be based on the ideas of Transglobal Underground.”
he album was positively reviewed (not least in the pages of this magazine) and the obvious next step was to make the collaboration
a live one. To this end, Transglobal-ists Tim Whelan (guitar/keyboards), Mantu (drums and percussion), vocalist / spoken word man Tuup and sitarist Sheema Mukherjee headed over to Albania, initially for a couple of gigs and subsequently for a European tour. “It is developing every day,” says Olsi of the FT meets TGU live sound. “It’s hard because it is a huge project, we are a minimum eighteen people on the road. The crew are Italian, there are Albanians and Londoners, so there is always a need for translation, but everyone loves it!”
Are there plans to continue the pro-
ject? “We’ll see what happens because the development of the project doesn’t depend on us or on the bands, it depends a little bit on the market.” Well, here’s hop- ing. Because the live show feels like one whole unit working together, rather than a collaboration between two distinct bands, with some very impressive new material developed after the release of the album.
I wonder, by way of a parting shot, where the album’s title derives from. “Kaba is a traditional Albanian musical form derived from polyphonic singing, the singing of laments,” explains Olsi. “Because much of the music is about tragedy and drama. In kaba the violin and clarinet take the place of the singing. The legend is that the wife of a clarinet player was dying, so he was crying and his wife said ‘Come on, you are an Albanian man, you must be strong. If you want to cry, get your clarinet and make that cry!’ Fanfara Tirana took this music and arranged it for brass, then those guys from London added electronics and drums and it becomes… Kabatronics!”
www.fanfaratirana.com F
Photo: Yannis Psathas
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