unbound atlas

Images and Soundscapes through the Balkans by www.kinisifestival.com

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Sound and Silence with Katerina Tzedaki

Katerina Tzedaki describes herself first as a composer and sound artist, then researcher of acoustic ecology and academic teacher of sound arts, and finally as a life-time student. “It is interesting to pass knowledge to the younger generation, and also to learn from them. It is a relation that is very fruitful, and it is interactive.” Since 2004 she has been working at the Department of Music Technology and Acoustics of the Technological Educational Institute of Crete, where she teaches sound design and interactive music systems.

 She explains that in her life the role of sound and music must be in relation to silence - a statement that seems exemplified in the balance and calmness of her voice - and in the relation between music, life, inner sounds, silence, and soundscapes through sounding practices.

 Katerina Tzedaki will be opening Kinisi Festival of Sound on Friday 21 October with a soundwalk leading the audience through the village of Pyrgos, as well as a collaborative element together with the FYRO Macedonaian Dzambo Agushevi Orkestar.  She will also be working with RadioKit Collective in leading a sound-mapping workshop in locations across the island.

 Being born and raised in Crete, when the decision was made to study music after high school there were limited opportunities for gaining Western musical education anywhere in Greece. “There were of course options for studying traditional music, but in fact I wasn’t really interested in Cretan traditional music at the time, to be honest. Maybe because I was so much inside these sound environments and soundscapes that I wanted to have different experiences.” Katerina went to Athens to study at a conservatoire, which at the time was the main access to Western musical education. By recommendation she followed the classes of a particular teacher, Yiannis Ioannides, whom she names as the first influence on her practice.

KT: Ioannides was not really following the system of the conservatoire. In a way he was teaching composition from the beginning. His lessons were also seminars for all of us in the history of music in the 20th century. It all started from this. He was a great person and he introduced all of us to the connections and relations in music from the ancient Greeks and Chinese to Western and he had a magical way to connect music from different systems. So we had the opportunity to analyse, listen and compose. And that was my first experience of – well my first music school. I was 18 and had just finished high school in Crete and went to Athens where I met this teacher. It was amazing.

She later joined the Centre of Contemporary Music Research in Athens, which provided the tools for developing further her practice within sound programming, recording, montage and splice-cut techniques.

 Katerina’s contribution to Kinisi Festival of Sound will be a soundwalk: a practice that emerged through the development of the field of acoustic ecology.

KT: Acoustic ecology refers to the balance of sounds in our everyday life and in our environment. That’s the main question – the dynamic balance of sounds, and how these sounds are helpful or not in our lives, and not only for us but also for the other species we share the planet with.

She describes it as what might be on older practice that was reinvented by a group of scholars and composers including Hildegard Westerkamp and Murray Schafer among others, in Vancouver in the 1970s. Incentivised by studying the sounds of our environments, how they are created and the relation they have to our lives, the term soundscape was invented to denote sound environments as composites.

KT: The term soundscape is connected to the space, the place. There is a place and this soundscape is the soundscape of this place, which includes all sounds. But in the definition developed by Schafer he also somehow inserts the idea that a soundscape can be an imaginary sonic environment, such as a musical composition. He writes in his book ‘Soundscape – The Tuning of the World’ that even absolute music could be considered as “ideal soundscapes of the mind.” In a way he also suggests that one might consider that our environment, the sonic environment, the soundscape, is a continuous composition, it’s a continuous music that is playing all the time and in which we are sometimes the composers, sometimes the creators, sometimes the listeners and sometimes all three at once. Everything is sound, and everything is music. That’s it.

 Photo by Marcos Andronicou

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Stars of Prilep - A Family Affair

Moments before their evening’s work I managed to steal a quick conversation out of the busy lives of the Stars of Prilep/Prilepski Zvezdi. Through video-call I was introduced by Djejhan Demirov, the bands bass and keyboardist, to Sevim Asanoski, Elisej Redjeposki, Ajnur Asanoski, Almir Fejzuloski, Antonio Zekiroski, Amid Tairovski, Atiljan Mustafoski who waved and offered a few words whilst sound checking and preparing for the evening’s gig: a Roma party.  

As a Roma family band from Prilep, FYROM their entry into music meant following a well trodden path of family tradition.  

DD: We have all been playing music since we were very young. We have it in our genes and in our blood. Most of us started playing around the age of 8. We are all from the same town, the same place, and we are all family, we are all related. Most of us are cousins. Prilpeski Zvezdi!

The group came together in 2007 and have been playing at festive occasions of all kinds almost every day since. “Mainly weddings and parties, but really anything you can celebrate,” says the bass keyboardist, Djejhan. The band performs at weddings all over Europe, and organises tours between events in different countries.

HH: Can you describe what it’s like to be in the band?

DD: We play weddings almost every day. It’s hard. We don’t sleep well, we don’t eat well, because we’re travelling almost everyday. It’s a tough life. But the music is in our blood. I don’t know how to say it, but we are born with music. Everyday we have a new adventure – everyday! Meeting new people, new cultures, and musicians from other countries.

HH: What types of music do you play?

DD: We play all types of music. But mainly we play our folklore music. We also play some new songs form Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, Turkey, some Italian music. We play what we like. We discuss it and we come to an agreement. 

HH: What will you playing at Kinisi?

DD: We will play our Balkan music. We are so excited for Greece! We will have to discuss together what kind of work we will take there, the dresses, what colours… You will see!

Stars of Prilep will be performing at Kinisi Festival of Sound on Saturday 22 October 2016. 

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Just favorited Kinis Festival of Sound 2016 Mini Preview by Kinisi Festival of Sound on Mixcloud

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Just uploaded Kinis Festival of Sound 2016 Mini Preview to Mixcloud. Listen now!

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Mapping Stories with Vladimir Radinovic

Vladimir Radinović aka Manovski grew up in the New Belgrade Blocks and started off performing as an MC and reggae/dancehall DJ. Living in different cities offered him different influences, hence the multitude of genres drawn into his different acts – including punk, hip-hop, glitch and electronic music.

Since returning to Belgrade Vladimir has been involved in various sound art and experimental electronic music projects, sound mapping and field recording, as well as DJing. Together with Piotr Żyła, who runs the Polish radio network Radiofonia, he has founded a radio management company, RadioKit and an associated foundation through which they produce sound art related projects.

 Piotr and Vladimir will be leading a 4-day sound-mapping workshop with Katerina Tzedaki at Kinisi Festival of Sound from Thursday 20 – Sunday 23 October 2016. To sign up for the workshop send an email to [email protected].  

To listen to previous sound mappings of Belgrade go to: http://zvucnamapabeograda.rs/ 

HH: What do you plan on doing at the festival?

VR: Our plan is to do a sound mapping workshop where we teach participants how to record, how to interview people and the techniques that we’ve been using to best reach a story. Most of the time we’ll be going around the island to collect stories and specific sounds, so that we can create a sound map of Santorini through its people, both tourists and locals. For me, sound mapping is always more about the locals, but I also think you can’t have one without the other.

The idea is to preserve the local stories, histories and non-material heritage of the island through collecting these stories and putting them on a map so that people can have a place they can visit and a story they can listen to about the place. We’re always looking for stories that are connected to a building or to the location – anything we can map.  We don’t care about historical stuff, like when the building was built, or by what architect – you can read that’s stuff on Wikipedia, or in tourist guides and history books. We’re interested in some of the alternative histories of cities and places.

HH: Who will you be working with on Santorini?

VR: Piotr Żyła. He is a sound designer and my colleague from Poland. Together we run RadioKit, which is a company that produces all kinds of tools for radio management. Besides the company we have a foundation in Poland through which we do all kinds of sound art related projects, and sound mapping is one of them. We are building these tools for radio and most of them are based on archiving audio, so we realised we can actually use this for a lot of other stuff as well. I was working with sound maps before, but when I started working with Piotr it clicked, he is also a phonographer, and we both love to record sounds.

HH: How did you and Piotr meet and how did you end up working together?

VR: I met Piotr through Marcin, who I met a few years ago on a workshop in Budapest that was on empowering community radios in the Balkans. He was one of the teachers there and used to run a radio in Krakow called Radiofonia, which Piotr is now running. So we all joined together on this start-up idea and went for it. We work with a couple of other guys in Poland so we’re 8 people now. I’m the reason why we all have to speak in English. They always tell me: “Come on man, you should learn Polish.”

HH: What impact have the places you’ve lived in had on your relation to music and sound?

VR: The sound mapping and recording of stories has more to do with my family than with a country. Because there are many things that I never got to ask my grandparents that I would love to know. And many of the stories they told me when I was a kid I cannot remember or I can only remember parts of it, and that sucks. That is kind of what got me into the whole idea of recording stories.

With music making I kind of noticed when I was moving around that certain cities have more of an affect on me. I used to listen to and try to make one type of music when I was in Novi Sad, and when I was in Finland I went in to really dark ambient electronic music, and then when I went to Berlin all of a sudden it shifted towards the club scene. But I kind of gave up on music to be honest; I don’t remember the last time I made a track. I’ve really transitioned towards sound design and sound recordings. I do play live with a bunch of friends here in Belgrade, the project is called ImprovE. I usually play field recordings and create some loops out of them so the friends who actually know how to play instruments play on top of it, and it’s just kind of a tapestry for them, like a background ambience sort of thing. So this is kind of my musical direction at the moment. 

HH: Why do you have so many names for yourself?

 VR: That has always been a fun thing for me. Like the guy who did all these crazy comic books, Robert Crumb. He also did this thing with inventing thousands and thousands of names for himself to try and keep his work anonymous. Because I was all over the place when I first started making music. I was a drum & bass mc, and then I was a reggae dj, and then I was in a punk band, and I started this thing with electronic music, and then I wanted to make some hip-hop. So I decided I needed to separate all these things, because it was weird for people that I was doing all these different things at the same time. The different names reflect different styles, cultural and emotional associations. In Serbian suzuki is slang for fast, so I chose the name Pitchi Suzuki for techno. Then there’s John Revolta for the punk music, [*]nuclear2 relates to my grandfather. You know how dancehall and reggae artists often use “man” in their names, like Elephant Man, Beenie Man and Yellowman? While I was in Finland so many people struggled with pronouncing Eastern European names, so I wanted to use a name that was stereotypical of both Jamaican artists and my own background. So I came up with Manovski. Just like the Finish musician Sasu Ripatti used Vladislav Delay. But at one point - or now that I’m a bit older - I really stopped caring.

HH: Have you got a particular story from your sound mapping projects that stand out?

VR: I have this crazy story from when we were recording people during this street art festival in Belgrade. We met a homeless guy who took us on a tour around the city. He showed us the best places to hide, where you could get food, and he told us the story of how he became homeless. He was originally from Sarajevo where he used to be a geography professor, but eventually ended up living on the streets in Belgrade. He even has a son in Bosnia, but never got in touch with his family there. Some time later we found out he had died of cancer and I realised how powerful recordings can be. I cried for half an hour. I wanted to try and find his family so we could give them the recording, but there are so many people in Bosnia with the same name. But one day I may start from the top of the phonebook, you know. But this is why I do it – to record and preserve these strange and powerful moments. 

Photo by: Dragan Markovic

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The Shortest Word - with Igor Cubrilovic

Composer, musician and sound artist, Igor Cubrilovic grew up moving between different corners of Yugoslavia (he still refers to the region and his home country by its old name), as his father worked on building up the roads, railways and dams of the newly founded nation. He has since lived in eleven countries and worked on a vast range of musical projects including sound installations, rock, jazz, and participated in an improvisational orchestra, film music, production - the list goes on. Three years ago Igor returned to Belgrade where he is set on using the technological tools of our era to preserve and project his culture and context “for the generations that come after.”

In spite of his aversion to islands – “The only island I’m going to is Manhattan … I don’t know why, it’s a Woody Allen thing” – he will be making the journey to the volcanic island, with grand plans: “You know when you blow over the top of a bottle and it makes a sound…?”

Igor Cubrilovic will be performing at Kinisi Festival of Sound together with the Serbian Women’s Choir “Bajke” on Sunday 23 October 2016.

Listen to a field recording of Bajke from The Mazi Collective's most recent research trip:

HH: What do you plan on doing at the festival?

IC: At the festival I plan on doing a multi-source installation together with two women who will sing with me during the live part of the performance. The songs are from the mountains in southern Serbia and ultra traditional, one hundred years old songs. The two women are like best friends. When they came to see me in Belgrade one of them was soon to be married, and the other is her maid of honour. The two of them were here in the studio, together with her husband. They were like a family and you could see that the two of them are tight. They sing like that, like  they've singing together for ages.

HH: What are their names?

IC: Well their names are Maria and Alexandra. But I call them “bajke” and that’s a plural of “bajka” which means fairy-tale. The town that they come from is famous for this particularly brutal and terrible incident that happened in the beginning of WW2. There is a poem about it called Bloody Fairy-tale (Krvava Bajka). This town is connected to that word because of the female Serbian poet who wrote it. So I call them fairy-tales because the word “bajke” rimes with “majke,” which means mothers. Because they are two women, one of them is getting married, they will have kids and become mothers, they understand what motherhood is. And they sing this music that doesn’t really exist because it’s so old, the songs are almost like imaginary fairy-tales. So I’m calling them Bajke.

HH: How do you know them?

IC: When I told Ramona and Alyssa that I’m a sucker for female voices in general they put us in touch. There are a lot of positive people and a lot of positive energy involved, and then they brought these two girls from Kragujevac, they are amazing, singing. I’m recording, it’s a lot of fun. And when they let it rip it was insane. It was literally peeling paint off the walls, it was loud, it was so much fun.

There are a lot of positive people and a lot of positive energy involved, and then they brought these two girls from Kragujevac, they are amazing, singing. I’m recording, it’s a lot of fun. And when they let it rip it was insane. It was literally peeling paint off the walls, it was loud, it was so much fun.

What I want to play isn’t traditional music. And the festival is sort of dealing with the same issues I’m dealing with: your cultural identity, your history, how to move your tradition into the 21st century, and not just through hip-hop, because that’s not your culture. You cannot pretend hip-hop doesn’t exist, but this isn’t my culture. I respect my culture, I know a lot about my culture. But I want to use all the knowledge and technology that I have and all the influences from the world that I’ve seen and put this culture into the 21st century. So what I’m playing is very simple and sort of symbolic in the way that reminds people of traditional instruments, except it’s not a traditional instrument, it doesn’t sound like a traditional instrument and it’s not played like a traditional instrument. I don’t want that to dominate the emotional impact, but when you experience the way it is presented, there is this arch that connects the whole thing. It’s regional music so they sing in a very traditional way. Because they are used to situations where girls sit and crack corn and sing together.

I was super inspired by the space; locations are very inspirational to me. But then I realised, Santorini is actually the edge of a volcano with two thirds under water and this tiny part above water, and that’s where we’re going to be! Wow! I was totally blown away. I started thinking about this Helmholtz resonator. You know when you blow over the top of a bottle and it makes a sound? It’s this guy Helmholtz who calculated what note you would get if you blow under a certain angle together with the diameter of the hole. So I was thinking: “What is the diameter of the volcano?”

HH: That’s thinking very big!

IC: I was thinking, wouldn’t it be amazing if I could hit that frequency. Not literally that frequency, because I wouldn’t want to wake up the volcano. If we could maybe just make ripples on the water or something. But actually it’s 7km. It’s not impossible, you can totally do it. But you’re basically making a hurricane. The only people who have that equipment are military people. And those are the people you don’t want to ask any favours from, and you don’t want to owe them anything - ever. But because that frequency is really low, we wouldn’t hear it anyways, because it’s 7km. Sound waves that are longer than 25m we can’t hear, it goes below our hearing. We could maybe see the ripples on the water and get the earthquake, and then we’d have to get the hell off the island. That’s not my idea of a good time, especially for someone who doesn’t want to be on an island. “I don’t want to be on an island –let’s destroy it!” Wrong attitude. So I calculated the note of the volcano, I know what the note of the volcano is. Since we can’t hear the real note in the frequency of 7km anyways, I’ve just transposed this. This is going to be my starting note for the composition.

So I calculated the note of the volcano, I know what the note of the volcano is. Since we can’t hear the real note in the frequency of 7km anyways, I’ve just transposed this. This is going to be my starting note for the composition.

HH: And what is it?

IC: Aaah, I’m not telling! Do your own calculations! So I started with that. I want to incorporate as much of Santorini into the performance as possible.

HH: How did you get into making music?

IC: I went to music school, but they told my parents: “We don’t think your son should come next semester.” Because I didn’t’ want to play anybody else’s music. When you’re 6 years old they don’t have department for composers. They send you to music school to learn how to play instruments, and you learn how to do that by playing other people's music. “I came here for you to teach me to express this that I have in my head. Can you do that? No? You suck as a teacher.” So it was more like that. But I had a piano at home and I had enough neighbours around that I could get around these things, and I kept all my books from school and I kept the guitar. But at that time I was already into tape recorders, cutting tapes, collages and mixes.

HH: So you’ve been composing music since as long as you’ve been playing music?

IC: Yes, that’s the initial reason why you play music, to express yourself. If I wanted to express myself with words I would be writing emails. Even this is a lot of words. Talking about music is like dancing about architecture. I also field record. I record everything all the time. I managed to collect all the sounds from Damascus to Frankfurt. People, dialogues, phone conversations, travelling, smugglers. I went to Syria 10 years ago, I know people there and I was worried about them, I’ve been trying to help them. I had a lot of those conversations, filmed and documented and especially sounds. And I asked them to send me the sounds of the bombings. I have old sounds from places that don’t exist anymore. Now there are only pictures, sounds, and conversation with people. So from then to now, through the roads, the truck stops, the smugglers, the sea to the crossings, through Greece, Macedonia, Serbia, Hungary, all the way to Frankfurt.

HH: You’ve lived and worked in a lot of different places, can you describe the relation between your music and these different parts of the world?

IC: I’m concerned with how to preserve our culture without being overrun, compromised, watered down and turned into clichés, and how to move that for the generations coming after us. Using tools that we have now. I don’t want to pretend that we don’t live in the 21st century. Look at us - this is insane! This conversation is shooting through and over us in some satellite. Why should I pretend that this doesn’t exist? This is exactly the technology that I want to use. I just don’t want to pretend that whatever is happening in Berlin is the only way of using that technology. They implement that technology in their culture and their values, and I respect that and I love some of that stuff. But for me to do that, then I should be in Berlin. But here, that’s just abstract. I think right here, right now, what’s important. I’m doing everything that everyone else is doing because I care, because this is where I live right now. And right now I live in Belgrade. So it’s Belgrade, Santorini, and Volcanoes.

This is the little pond that I swim in. This Italian composer, Giacinto Scelsi said that the border between East and West runs through his living room. Because he lived in Rome and there’s this street that runs around the Collosseum and onwards. And he said everything south of that street is East, is the Orient. And I totally agree with him, because I consider the Danube to be the border between the East and West. I call that “desna strana Dunawa” which means the right side of the Danube, and then there is the wrong side of the Danube. You can stand on a bridge here in Belgrade and have east and west on each side of your feet. I’m very interested in this idea of East. And of course when I read Edward Said, Orientalism, I thought: “Aha.” Kundera wrote two great essays on how the French cannot translate Kafka because they cannot compute - and he wrote it in French! If you’re looking for someone who is not a musician but dealing with the same issues and subjects as me - that’s the man. He wrote an essay called Testament Betrayed, much more articulately than me, obviously - the man is good with words. He writes this difference, about how we rub east and west, that push and pull, and how to preserve your culture.

There was this cultural change in our time: the country that I grew up in doesn’t exist anymore.  Although I still say I’m from Yugoslavia, people tell me: “You know that place doesn’t exist anymore?” And I’m like: “Yea, but what can I do?” That’s just the way it is.

HH: Do you still think of this region in that way?

IC: Totally. When I go to Bosnia and I take the highway, I’m always so shocked when they stop us. And then I remember that there’s a checkpoint. I’ve forgot to bring my passport so many times when making these trips. We don’t even need a translator, and were standing there discussing that I need a passport. Culturally it’s the same thing. What I see is that when you start moving around, you see people as two groups of people – people who see things as different, and people who look for things that we have in common. And I’m the kind of guy, when I go to places I’ve never been before, like when I go to Ethiopia I think: “Guys – you have the same instrument as us.” And they reply with: “Whitey, this is a traditional holy Ethiopian instrument.” And I’m like: “Dude, hand it over, let me show you.” And they’re so surprised I can play. For me it’s all about the similarities. Haile Selassie was best friends with Tito!

What I see is that when you start moving around, you see people as two groups of people – people who see things as different, and people who look for things that we have in common. And I’m the kind of guy, when I go to places I’ve never been before, like when I go to Ethiopia I think: “Guys – you have the same instrument as us.” And they reply with: “Whitey, this is a traditional holy Ethiopian instrument.” And I’m like: “Dude, hand it over, let me show you.” And they’re so surprised I can play. For me it’s all about the similarities. Haile Selassie was best friends with Tito!

HH: Final words?

IC: I’m just working - I don’t judge anything. I don’t have that idea of right and wrong. There’s just emotions, and that’s what I deal with even if I cruelly say that I deal in emotional manipulation. But that is what we all want. If I go to see a romantic comedy, I want to see those two people kissing at the end, otherwise I want my money back. That’s what I came for. When you see an action movie you want to see Bruce Willis come out of impossible situations and survive and kill the bad guy. You want that. That’s’ what you paid your money for. That’s’ emotional manipulation. You wake up and you feel like shit, you put on you favourite record and you feel much better before your step out of your door. That’s what I do. That’s how I see my work. But in the most positive way! I don’t work for advertisement agencies or anything like that.

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Do you know what Kaynak means? - Cvetelin Andreev and the Kaynak Pipers Band

The Kaynak Pipers Band, a kaba gaida (bagpipe) ensemble playing traditional music from the Rhodope Mountains in southern Bulgaria, will be giving a concert at Kinisi Festival of Sound on Friday 21 October, as well as giving a bagpipe workshop with the Greek tsabouna (bagpipe) player and maker, Yannis Pantazis, on Saturday 22 October. On the final day of the festival, Sunday 23 October, they perform in a site-specific collaboration with electronic musician Ivan Shopov.

Cvetelin, the manager of the group, first encountered the kaba gaida whilst trekking in the Rhodope Mountains: “It is a magical place. I was on a trip there for a couple of weeks by myself with a backpack. I was trekking the peaks. One year later I bought a gaida and started to learn.”

The kaba gaida, unique to Rhodope region, is pitched in E and made from natural materials — goatskin, elder reeds, plum and cornel. Compared to the dura gaida, also common in Bulgaria, the kaba gaida is larger with a hexagonal, conical chanter that is larger at the end due its lower pitch.

In 2005 Cvetelin started learning with Kostadin Gerdzhikov as his teacher in Sofia. Originally from the Rhodope region, Konstadin began playing the kaba gaida since the age of 10, inspired by his cousin Nikolay Belyashki, one of the few traditional makers of the kaba gaida in Bulgaria. Nikolay constructs all of the bagpipes used by the core group of Kaynak pipers. The fluid ensemble, often supplemented,  began meeting in Sofia eleven years ago, and includes  pipers Cvetelin Andreev, Kostadin Gerdzhikov and Yanko Marangozov, as well as vocalist Todora Vasileva, and drummer Peter Yordanov. 

Cvetelin shared stories about the activities of the group, the history and traditions of the Rhodope region and the tradition of making and playing the kaba gaida.

 CA: Nikolay started making the gaida when he was 15. He is quite a traditional guy, and he understands how the gaida should sound. This is the only criterion he has. Not about the ease of use, or simplicity of materials. This is important  and something we should respect, because the Rhodope Mountains is a slightly separated region, and the synthetic materials arrived there later. They came when the information economy started excelling, but we were able to preserve this way of making the gaida, the traditional way. It’s not like this has been entirely prevented here either, but the traditional gaida in Bulgaria is really blooming. I believe this is because of the information available through the Internet and the communities we have been able to build around this initiative. It is because people are beginning to think about preserving it in this way and rather than the easiest or easier way. That it is more important to keep the spirit of the gaida than to make it easy. I’ve been playing for 11 years and it’s hard for me to tune it. When the gaida is new for example, the reeds are not settled and you have to put a lot of effort to make it play right. That’s why it's easier to use plastic reeds. The other way is harder but it pays off.

RS: What is the spirit of the gaida?

CA: The gaida is a complex instrument. You can use it for personal development. It’s good for the health, for the mind, for emotions. You develop a lot of human values… like patience. If you cannot tune the gaida after 11 years of playing, you learn to be patient. And it’s a social instrument because it gathers the people. Here we gather to learn together, we share the knowledge. When you go to a wedding everyone gathers to dance. For the Bulgarian tunes, and folklore, it is quite widespread to use irregular rhythms. The rhythms correspond with dances. You have ‘rachenitsa’, and the most common one, which is ‘horo’ (circle dancing), and when you play the gaida everybody wants to dance. So it’s a social instrument that gathers people. Many people have told me they get goose pimples, especially when many bagpipes play together, the sound is very majestic. I thought it was only in Bulgaria that you felt this way because it is in our DNA, but when we’ve performed abroad, a lot of people, foreigners and people from other cultures, come to us and say they feel the same. So to me, the gaida, this gaida, is something more than a Bulgarian instrument.

RS: Are people still playing it?

The gaida is an instrument for the people - it’s not for the stage. Traditionally the shepherds would move the sheep from the mountain to the valley in the winter and play the gaida.

CA: The gaida is an instrument for the people - it’s not for the stage. Traditionally the shepherds would move the sheep from the mountain to the valley in the winter and play the gaida. This way of life has changed, so you have to get the basis of the traditions, it is something that gathers people that brings them joy. You go to weddings, you play the bagpipe. Using a new way of presenting the folklore is ok.

The bagpiping tradition in Bulgaria is widespread and very developed. Everyone knows the gaida and will know couple of songs. But it’s not only Bulgarian, it is Rhodopean, it’s from the mountains. You know Orpheus? The guy who went to the underworld? He is from there, the bagpipe is from there, the songs are from there, it’s all from there. And it is very traditional.

Because of the economic situation many come to Sofia to learn and play, which is one step closer to the international scene. Nevertheless, it is my belief that the sound from the gaida in the Rhodope Mountains is different. I could play the same gaida here, but when I go there it sounds different. It’s a majestic mountain and the home of gaida is there. You should discover this through personal experience – just go there! The difference is to be sensed, it cannot be explained in words…

RS: Where do the songs come from?

CA: The songs come from our oral tradition. Konstadin is from the mountains, and he knows the songs from his parents. His parents know the song from their parents. There is no interruption in transmission. Of course the lyrics change a little according to the times, but the tunes are the same. I don’t know any songs that reflect the current environment. The latest songs are from the communist regime; they talk about the corporations. Other ones are from Russo-Turkish war. We were under Turkish occupation for 500 years so there are a lot of songs commemorating this time. And love songs.

One of the songs we play is a funny song. It’s a marriage song about Rushika who is in a hurry to get married far from her birth village. She probably wanted to feel something new and get away from home. The first weekend she’s came back she tells her mother “Oh I am very hungry, I am starving over there, there is no one to look after me, give me some traditional food!” It’s maybe not a story to get married to.

Another song is one where a girl goes to the mountains to pick cherries, the fog comes down and she meets a group of guys. They’re usually alone in the mountains, so when they see this girl they want to have some fun. And she says: “Come on, we are brothers, be my brothers, show me the way.” And they say: “No no, we already have sisters, we don’t need another sister, we need parties, lovers.” It’s a song for the men, because it’s hard, you’re isolated. It’s not necessarily a warning to the girl, but rather to show the loneliness of these men, who don’t have the opportunity to meet a girl, to kiss a girl.

HH: What projects are you involved in as a group?

CA: Our mission is to get people closer to the kaba gaida. We believe that this gaida has a special place in the world, and a unique cultural heritage, so we want to help people feel it. For this reason we give online lessons and manage the online community of kaba gaida fans, as well as face to face lessons here in Sofia. We. There are a lot of Bulgarians who live abroad, who sometimes wish to get closer to Bulgaria. They start learning the gaida and we use Skype or Youtube to help them learn. Online interaction is of course good, but it is not as personal. We want to build these learning communities everywhere.

We organise workshops with children and show them that the instrument is only one part of the whole experience. We've built small bagpipes because the children can’t put their fingers on the chanter, so we have to make smaller ones so they can reach. If kids have a role model, someone to watch and learn from it can be very intuitive and easy to learn. So we gather the parents and children so they can have a common experience. We play, dance together, and learn different rhythms, we teach our bodies to make complex movements. With the small gaidas we teach them to play, we touch the materials so they know – this is wood, this is cornel, this is plum, so they can feel and know the difference, this is heavier this is softer. We sing together, which is very beautiful, they learn a song in each workshop.

At the moment I’m  also leading the crowd funding campaign for our US tour. We’re going to Richmond, Chicago Music festival, and  we'll also perform at MIT in Boston.

HH: Final words?

You know what kaynak means? In Turkish it means spring, source, where the water comes out. And it describes the state of the musician when he plays his own things, and he plays really well, and you recognise him by hearing only this aspect - this is him.

CA: You know what kaynak means? In Turkish it means spring, source, where the water comes out. They say: “Go to kaynak to fetch water.” So it means source, and in the bagpipe tradition in the Rhodope Mountains they say: “This is his kaynak, this is his source.” And it describes the state of the musician when he plays his own things, and he plays really well, and you recognise him by hearing only this aspect - this is him. Often they are really fast tunes, really from the soul and he is just a transmitter, and he receives it and it is transmitted through the fingers – the kaynak. This is a musician.

Listen to a field recording of the Kaynak Pipers Band from our most recent research trip to Sofia, Bulgaria:

 Try playing the kaba gaida using your keyboard (see comments for instructions): 

[unboundatlas]

Sounds Come Before Light: A Conversation with Ivan Shopov

Ivan Shashev Shopov works under many guises. In the drum and bass scene he is known as Cooh. Techno lovers know him as Drum Kid. In his project Balkansky he blends traditional Bulgarian folklore music with contemporary electronic genres -  collaborating with folk musicians, such as Bulgarian kaval player, Theodosii Spassov.

This October Ivan will perform at Kinisi Festival of Sound on Santorini in Greece. He will be collaborating with the Kaynak Pipers Band, a kaba gaida (Bulgarian bagpipes) ensemble, to present a site specific, experimental performance mixing traditional Bulgarian folklore from the Rhodope Mountains, with electronic music and sound design.

I wanted to learn something about the processes and inspirations within such diverse sounds. Ivan very kindly re-installed Skype to connect me, from Amsterdam, to him, in Sofia.

HH: Being well versed in cross-genre collaborations through projects such as Balkansky, I wondered about the level of preparation you imagine for Kinisi?

IS: We will try to set up a few plans for how to work with the sound. But we will leave the final decision and the final composition for the festival and let the place inspire us for the piece. I think this is important, because it is also a specific place, I don’t want to ruin it with too much expectation. We will see when we arrive, how it goes.

HH: Is this the method that you usually work in?

IS: Yes, I’ve worked a lot in this field. People invite me to set up sound designs for a certain place or venue where I’ve never been before. That’s a challenge I always like to take on. I usually dj around the world, and that’s my main income, and I’m most well know for my dj sets. I’ve released about 100 vinyl records with my music on it and over 200 tracks with different styles. From drum & bass to dubstep to techno. I’ve done this for so long that I’m now looking more into these challenges, to provoke myself with different venues and sound concepts. I’ve been working with contemporary artists in Bulgaria, doing digital art, creating interactive installations, using sensors and programming, cameras, motion sensors, and so on.

HH: You are also a visual artist?

IS: I never studied music or sound. I studied ceramic sculpture, and I finished the National Academy of Arts with fine arts and printmaking. So for me, sound is more or less like drawing a picture, just with different brushes. I always take this approach to sound, and I think this is what keeps me going. I don’t know the notes and to me they are a nice language, but I like to listen to it. But while I speak it comes from my soul not from my brain somehow.

HH: When did you start working with sound?

IS: I had a metal band when I was 16 in my hometown. Around that time a friend showed me his computer, with software installed on it, which you could create electronic sounds with. That was also the first time I used a computer. I had never touched one before because back in ’96, ‘95, there were about 6 computers in the whole town. My friend showed me how to change the sound on the screen with a mouse, and I thought “Wow – you can do that!? This is the future!” So I wanted to explore it. He gave me a floppy disk with the software and I installed it on another friend’s computer and started experimenting with it, recording tapes, taking them home and listening to them, learning from trial and error. But I really loved music since I was a kid. My grandmother used to sing Bulgarian traditional songs and she was part of a traditional choir in our village. I used to sing with her at home, and try the melodies that she taught me, everyone used to say the musical feeling was inside me. So I never actually felt like studying music, it was just a part of my development.

HH: How do you align your relation with traditional Bulgarian music styles and more experimental, electronic styles?

IS: I have several different projects with Bulgarian folklore, and it’s always a challenge and an interesting new path to mix it with different instruments, it’s never boring. It never gets to the point where I think: “Ah, I’m sick of this Bulgarian stuff, ok lets go to my synthesizers again.” You know, it’s so rich! It’s like a huge ocean with sounds, melodies and stories. It’s a never-ending inspiration to me. And just at the moment when you think: “Ok, I’ve heard this song so many times.” You hear it from another singer or another great musician, and then you realise - every talent offers something different, even with the same words.

HH: Do you usually work with recordings or do you work with people live?

IS: I mostly work with people live. I take them to my studio and we work together on an arrangement. When I work with Theodosii Spassov - he’s played all around the world on so many different projects from flamenco, to jazz, and rock. We’ve worked on albums together for 10 years where we mix Bulgarian folklore with electronic sounds. The sound goes from ambient, to dubstep, to downtempo, idm. All these contemporary styles fit really well with Bulgarian sounds. We record some sessions in studio, then we chop them up and move them around. It comes as improvisation. I play one of the ideas that I have on my computer and he starts improvising on top for about ten minutes, then we listen to the takes and decide on which part to be where. And from this arrangement we build it as a song. During live performance we play it as close as possible to the original. But sometimes we just start jamming with my electronic gear. He’ll play some harmonies, then I sample it, I put it on the back and then start building beats on top, he improvises off that. So we developed this combination of building blocks where we can provoke each other and get some interesting stuff on stage. We just played a festival last weekend in the mountains in Bulgaria with 1500 people in the audience and we completely improvised for 500 tracks, just jamming. People ask: “Wow, how long have you been playing this programme, it was so well done!?” This was really our rehearsal. Because I have so much experience in electronic sounds, and he has so much experience in jazz and folklore and is an amazing musician, it is always easy to scope something on the go. For me mistakes are where the music is, because if you have everything pre-recorded and super stable the only mistakes can come from the live musicians. But when you make a mistake and then make it good again the audience realises you are not playing the CD from your studio. I really like this improvisation part. And I think we will work on this kind of material at the festival in Greece.

HH: Where do your ideas come from, what sparks and drives them?

IS: 

I grew up in the mountains and to me seeing nature around me is the most natural source of inspiration. Looking at machines sometimes helps as well. When I do brutal drum & bass I imagine robots fighting and the end of the world. That is another part of me – the dark side. But the main inspiration is the beauty of our planet.

Especially when I travel, that is such a nice thing to do. Just exploring different places. The gig sometimes is… how to say this without being arrogant… not the most important part. The most important part is the whole picture, the journey, the people, the stories you hear, the stories you tell them, they way the people approach you, the way people see the world through their eyes. I like to explore these little details because I come from a really small place, so for me the beauty is in the detail.

HH: The way that you describe this seems to me very similar to how Ramona and Alyssa seem to approach Kinisi Festival. The whole experience…

IS: It was really nice to be on the same page as them, because sometimes people only book you to perform certain styles - but only this style because other styles suck. I’ve been told so many times when I play my drum & bass shows: “Hey, Ivan, you’re going to play drum & bass, no Balkansky please, no no no.” And I think: “You don’t have to tell me that.” It’s so offensive you know, half of you sucks, but this better half – you should have left the other side at home, we don’t need it, just bring the other one, we’ll have fun with that. Artists should express themselves in every possible manner, not just follow the rules of what a rave is. Especially coming from this other background, making experimental music, it’s such a boring time for me to just be the boring dj drum & bass expects me to be.

HH: Do you prefer one part of your practice more than another?

IS: I like it equally, but creating beautiful music is taking the better place in me. The hard music is still in my roots. I grew up listening to metal and I had long hair and all the aggression I had to release from my family situation, you know how teenagers are. So stiff about everything shit in their life, they think this is why they were born, to be shitty people. So this still fights inside me. Whenever I have these harsh feelings or I’m disappointed from something I get ideas for hard hitting drum & bass. But I can’t forbid this part of me. It helps me sort out my dark stuff. I always say that my music is my therapist, that I am my own therapist in making different music for different psychotic situations like that. And I’m really happy that lately most of it is beautiful music and just inspiring, organic, acoustic sounds that touch your soul. Probably because I’ve grown up and I’m not a teenager anymore. At least that’s what I think.”

HH: Is there a region or a country that’s been particularly influential on you, other than Bulgaria?

IS: Once I’d been to Australia and New Zealand I really opened my mind to the fact that our planet is a really small place. I mean it’s huge, but at the same time, it’s not impossible to go around. And when you go there and you see beautiful people and beautiful nature you kind of create this hope for the world that not only your national geography can give you the images. When you travel and you see these different countries and the beauty of them, you begin to believe this further, and this part of the world has had a huge impact on my career and inspiration. I also did two albums over there whilst I was touring, so I feel really connected to this part of the world.

HH: Is that because of its nature and scenery?

IS: Not only. The people, the culture, the way they see the world. The laziness, it’s a complex feeling. I like to explore a lot of their little details, how they approach food for example, how they go to work, when they chill, how they do it, how they drink, how they smoke. It’s so different - it’s like a better version of our western world. I mean, I’m not from the Western world anyway… I guess I feel myself as a citizen of the world, rather than a Balkan country guy… But to me New Zealand is another Bulgaria. Also nature wise, they are close. The mountains, the trees, everything reminded me of it. It felt so close, yet so far at the same time. But the feeling is amazing - to find that the earth is just mirrored somehow.

HH: You also give workshops?

IS: I give workshops everywhere I play. You name it - every country I’ve played in I’ve also given workshops. Sometimes big ones that are organised with hundreds of people, sometimes really improvised ones, sometimes I go before a gig and people start asking me geeky questions about music production. And I thought, instead of explaining this to you now and then your friends ask me again, why don’t you get all your friends together and I’ll talk for two hours, make a track in front of you, explain how I do it, and then you can just take it, I don’t want to get paid for it. Just spread the word. I’ve helped so many young producers become DJs, and they now travel around the world like me. It’s really inspiring to see them actually listen to you and not just take it for granted, but to really get inspired and work hard to achieve some great stuff. It’s very inspiring to see your work continue by someone else.

HH: It’s also fantastic to see this give and take relationship between the audience and the artist.

IS: Absolutely! Most of my colleagues are so closed. They think “I learned how to make this bassline and its my secret. And I think “Ok – what you’re going to take it with you to the grave?” What a “brave” man!” He’s got his secrets hidden up his ass – perfect… I have no secrets. I look at other people’s secrets and I adapt it to my workflow and then I put them everywhere, spread them. If everyone kept their secrets to themselves we wouldn’t have electricity, we wouldn’t have internet, I wouldn’t be talking to you on Skype. Music especially. It’s the easiest art form to understand. Sounds comes before the light — in my books at least. You can explain so much more with sound, voice and speech, than with gestures and pictures.

There was a nice comment on one of my youtube videos from an album that I did with Theodossii Spassov where he sings in Bulgarian, it’s a very deep — an emotional song. It’s sung in the Bulgarian language so only Bulgarian people can understand it, maybe a few people from FYROM, and a few Russians. But there was a comment saying: “I don’t understand a word, but I can’t stop crying.” So that’s how music works: breaking boundaries and breaking language barriers.

HH: Final words?

IS: I love music, I love travelling and I love art in every shape. I’m very open to all this — it’s all I do from morning until night, 365 days a year. I’m just this creative centre that spreads its creativity to all its corners. People come to me all the time. I produce a lot of artists and help them, giving workshops for art and for music and try to inspire people. That’s my main food – to inspire people and to get their eyes opened and wowed – that’s my food – my favourite dish.

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August 15th is often referred to as ‘The Second Easter’ in Greece. The holiday marking the Assumption of the Virgin Mary is celebrated country-wide and, I had heard, with a peculiar passion in Epirus. Three days straight of music and dancing that obliterated everything else. We were there for the music, the distinct sound of the mirologi (lament) that always teeters on the brink of an incurable despair, relenting momentarily to yield to its opposite, an uncapturable joy.

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https://soundcloud.com/kinisifestival/vitsa-panagiri

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We drove to Vitsa through the night. We had no view but could guess at it via the heady aroma of animal husbandry that blew into our open windows. It was the middle of summer, mid-August, but the season seemed to change the moment we entered central Zagori. Glowering cloud, evening rain and winds cool enough for sweaters. Time changed too.  A posted distance of twenty-two kilometres could take up to an hour to traverse along roads twisting and turning through bear country, open stretches dotted with shepherds, their flocks feasting and their sheeps dogs menacing. I live on an island in the Aegean Sea, in winter my rain-soaked home can feel like a prison adrift, but you can always see the horizon. It’s a vague but comforting reminder that there are other places. In this region of Epirus you can see only more mountains,  a sublime Renaissance landscape chattering with life. I can only imagine how it might have been to live fortified in these mountains, and how hard it would have been to every truly return when you had glimpsed the world beyond them.

[unboundatlas]

https://soundcloud.com/kinisifestival/vitsa-sheep-crossing

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We drove very slowly through the low mountains of Eastern F.Y.R.O.M., the countryside is dotted with clutches of beehives, and the roads are frequently interrupted by construction projects that pale in comparison with the grand works that are changing the face of Skopje. The statues continue to sprout, accompanied by music during the day and by multi colored lights at night, they divide public opinion and are - of course - much photographed.

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Bees in the forest of Pelister National Park, near to the city of Bitola, 1/2 an hour from the Greek border.

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We caught a glimpse of this garden from street, a canvas painted with orderly greens, the leaves of cabbages, tomatoes, and peppers stretching out below the branches of fruit trees, and eventually an open field of tobacco. Uncle Suleyman was the artist behind it all. He was seventy years old, retired, and no longer a smoker. He pointed up to his bedroom balcony and described the way his morning cough had echoed across the valley. He also told a story about a moment of pure silence he had experienced many years before, and he made the sound of that silence for us with a steady exhale of his breath. We left with a bag of tomatoes and an invitation to visit him again.

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The Prilepski Zvezdi, the Prilep Stars, play at a circumcision party in the Roma Neighborhood. Toni, a percussionist and one of the band’s leaders along with the Sevim the sampler maestro, told us that they planned to play for about eight hours. Toni is a seasoned pro who regularly plays with Esma Redzepova, as did his father Buzo, who was one of her 47 adopted children and musical protégés. The singer introduced the mother of the seven-year old boy for whom they were hosting this “wedding. A circumcision is a major celebratory occasion, so here it’s called a wedding, and demands the services of the best musicians available. The boy’s mother led the opening dance, hooking arms with all the women at the gathering. Slowly they danced, fingers linked and lifted to shoulder height, with sparkling, sequinned, gauzy dresses, and coiffed with glittered hairspray curls.

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This circumcision party had everything, including some children riding through carting a dead dog on the back of their bicycle. They rode to the edge of the neighborhood and returned empty handed half an hour later.

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Our host in Prilep, Petze, was a dedicated student of renowned Macedonian multi-instrumentalist Stefche Stoikovski. He would never allow us to pay for a cab and made sure that we met the best musicians in the city. Even though he was about to embark on a tour to Naples with his 35-piece Macedonian folk ensemble, he insisted on accompanying us to Prilep’s Roma neighbourhood two days in a row to make sure we got to the houses we needed to find.

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In F.Y.R.O.M. a wedding band may play for ten hours, they are an accompaniment to preparations, an escort to the service, and the mainstay of the after-party.