Kocani Orkestar - A Macedonia of Gypsy Sounds

In Kocani, a small town in Macedonia just a few kilometres from the Bulgarian border, beats the musical heart of the Balkans. The credit goes to Kocani Orkestar, a "brass band" of seven virtuoso brass players who produce a sound that's raucous, hypnotic and more than a little tipsy, somewhere between the thumping blows of the bass tuba and the trumpet's sudden flourishes. "It's pure oral tradition," says bandleader Nat Veliov. "The melodies are passed down from father to son; sometimes I pick them up off the street and rearrange them my own way."

The band's line-up is small: a couple of trumpets, three tubas, clarinet, saxophone, accordion and percussion (including traditional instruments like the "zourna", a kind of oboe, and the "tapan", a double-headed drum). But that's enough to power the whirlwind of timbres, accents and colours driving the Orkestar's second album, L'Orient est rouge ("The East is Red", named after an old Chinese communist song that became a hit in Tito's Yugoslavia). The legacy of the Janissary fanfares and the Ottoman army, updated by Gypsy brass bands, blends with the rhythms of Bulgarian, Turkish, Romanian, Macedonian and Serbian tradition. Many of the tunes are traditional dances: "cocek" (the female ones) and "oro" (the collective circle dances). But there's no shortage of crossovers with modern rumba and jazz stylings either (Veliov spent three years playing in jazz outfits). It's a pyrotechnic musical formula that in Italy became known above all through the soundtrack to Emir Kusturica's film "Underground", composed by Goran Bregovic. "But we have nothing to do with that project," Veliov and his bandmates proudly point out.

The Balkan brass band was born within a family. "My father," says Nat Veliov, "used to beat me to make me go to school; he didn't want me playing the trumpet. Now he's in the Orkestar too, along with my son." For the Veliov family, the age of the Roma caravans ended only a few years ago: "My grandfather," Naat recalls, "still used to travel by caravan. But now we have our own homes, and when I'm on the road I like to think my family is waiting for me at home."

Attending a Kocani Orkestar concert is an intoxicating experience, one that can sweep you up into whirling dances well into the night. Their Italian fan, singer-songwriter Vinicio Capossela, knows this well: live, he has the time of his life playing and carrying on like a kid with his Macedonian friends.

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