Around the same time as Yugoslavia was succumbing to the nationalist virus, another epidemic was spreading across western Europe: Balkan Fever (Morbus Balkeizmi). No one knows exactly any more, but today people claim that Kusturica’s films were the carriers. The symptoms were very grave. Harmless average citizens, who up until then wouldn’t have harmed a fly, suddenly began wearing gold chains, shamelessly swinging their hips, and even seriously believing they were gypsies and so had nothing to lose. Whereby the loan for their second car was almost paid off and the salary increase more or less finalised. The epidemic swept across Europe. The symptoms gradually disappeared, but the susceptibility remained. Then, out of nowhere, came the Sandy Lopicic Orkestar (SLO) and, in Graz, cultivated the next fever virus (Balkeizmi II sive Morbus Lopitschitschiensis) – a guaranteed resistant strain, but one which had what was necessary to gratifyingly confuse expectations, i.e., to broaden people’s minds. Infection as therapy? There had never been anything like it. Using jazz and funk grooves and sophisticated arrangements, the SLO overwhelmed an audience craving for new fever phases. They did this with hot Balkan music that had very little to do with Sljivovica, cheap hair cream and idyllic poverty, but yet still managed to preserve the drive of Roma brass bands and the soul of Balkan songs for the benefit of the big wide world. The fact that most of the SLO musicians came from different republics in the former Yugoslavia often led journalists and event managers to assume that it was all some kind of “reconciliation project”. Whereas the members of the Orkestar were never at loggerheads with one another – or if ever they were, then certainly not for nationalist reasons … What the exuberant music of the SLO reconciled were the different tastes of their audience – the jazz intellectuals, the ethno freaks, the people who just wanted to enjoy themselves to the accompaniment of good music, to say nothing of the purists. Much of the orchestra’s smart flair and grandeur emanates from the three female vocalists, their charisma, their intense voices, and the cultural awareness and respect with which they have plundered the whole of the Balkan region for their songs and now let them to shine in all their beautiful elegance. For Natasa Mirkovic-De Ro, Vesna Petkovic and Irina Karamarkovic are by no means just acoustic and optical trappings enhancing the band’s concept like Slav wedding decorations, they are its throbbing heart and brain. So here it is, the long-awaited second CD. A lot has happened since the first was released. Bojan Petrovic suddenly left the band, but, after a long odyssey which took him from New York to New Orleans to Old Nis, this Prodigal Son was gladly taken back (it’s no easy matter to find a trumpeter as well-versed in both jazz and the Serbian brass tradition). Lothar Lässer retired from the band to devote himself to other projects, but he is always a very welcome guest, as in “Cocek 4”, “Crven Fesic´ ” and “Hurry Up”. Instead of Lothar, a cuddly Balkan bear and brilliant Roma accordionist from Sofia called Martin Lubenov has now joined the band. Despite the many projects in which the musicians are individually involved, the SLO has merged to form an indissoluble unit. Both their own compositions and the “traditionals” are as red hot as ever, the arrangements even more dexterous, and the “former-Yugoslavians” produce a music that sounds even more Balkan than before. Here’s the Sandy Lopic ic Orkestar again, one of the most appropriate ways of succumbing to “Balkan Fever”, of celebrating the positive, fiesta side of the imaginary Balkans, and of being provoked by the question Irina Karamarkovic puts at the end of the song “Balkea”: “I malo zatim misljenja sgradili na svim zlim balkeizmima …”

BALKEA 
Richie Winkler composed this Balkan tango, Irina Karamarkovic´ provided the text – her reckoning with “Balkeismus”:“Perhaps this is not the SLO-CD you were expecting, something your ears already know. And perhaps our smiles on the cover photo are not genuine. And maybe it was pure chance that I was caught in that half light as I sing: Balkea, Balkea, Balkea ... // Or else you are crazy and have lost your senses as you sing Balkea, Balkea, Balkea. Do you really believe you have grasped the truth of our stories through these songs?”


BUGARK 
A  dance of the Romanianspeaking Wallach minority who live in Vlas¡ka Krajina (Wallach border) in northeastern Serbia on the border to Romania and Bulgaria. The Wallachs are famous for their fast dances – and this one is obviously dedicated to a pretty Bulgarian girl.


RAMPIRI 
 “Drops are falling on my tent. God did not take me to him. I have given everything I had in return for credit. I have nothing left. God did not take me to him.” A famous Turkish Roma song in a furioso arrangement by Martin Harms.

COCEK 4 
Cocek, a Roma dance in 4/4 time, fostered mainly in southern Serbia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Bulgaria, and Graz. This is surely the first Cocek composed by a German, saxophonist, Martin Harms. Who knows, perhaps one day the Cocek will gain the international status which Samba, Salsa, Tango, etc. achieved last century ...

DJAVOLCE (The Little Devil): 
 “I will sow tiny seeds / and clover will sprout / I will span oxen / to plough each valley. // I will kiss a young lad / oh my laddie, you little devil / and then I will scream so loud / that the earth will begin to churn.” A rural song that exudes an indomitable love of life and in which the singers not only occupy male domains (sowing, ploughing, wooing ...), but also emulate a traditional singing style which was previously reserved for men only.
Where will all this end?   ...lyrix

HURRY UP  
A composition that does justice to the title, and illustrates Richie Winkler’s weakness for stylistic cross-over. And just what is going on in his head the whole day long ...

MAKEDONSKO DEVOJCE 
One of the most famous songs of the central Balkan region, sung in the whole of the former Yugoslavia and Bulgaria as a folksong. It praises the incomparable beauty of Macedonian girls and women and tells those in the rest of the world that they should finally abandon all hope: “Is there a more beautiful girl in the whole wide world? No, no such girl will ever be born.”

KA POM Ë JA  
According to an Albanian idiom, one traveller is alone, two debate, and three sing. Southern Albanian vocal polyphony (Iso) is particularly well developed. “Where are you?” is the name of this song from the Albanian minority in
Epirus, in the north-west of Greece. Natas¡a, Vesna and Irina sing it a cappella. What is remarkable here is how Richie Winkler emulates the finer points of clarinet-playing in southern Albania.

KUPI MI MAJKO TOP  
A very unusual folksong from the northern Serbian Vojvodina, which blasts the cliché of the passive Balkan woman, while apparently confirming that of the “cruel Balkan”. The daughter pleads, “Mother, buy me a cannon so that I can kill my beloved because he has been deceiving me all along”. Things get even worse! In the second verse, her mother must buy a knife so that she can cut up all men like noodles. And in the last verse, her father is to dig a
grave so as to bury whatever is left over after the cannon has been fired.   ....lyrix

MAJA  
A composition which bass player Sas¡enko Prolic´, from Sarajevo, has dedicated to his two-year-old daughter Maja. Irina: “Maja decided to come into this world after a concert we gave in Vienna – on a cold but lovely winter’s night. Maja exudes freshness, independence and beauty, qualities which we ourselves like to share with our audience.”

CRVEN FESIC´ 
Another idiom: “If you go to Bosnia, you’d better not sing. If you go to Serbia, you’d better not dance. And if you go to Macedonia, you’d better do neither”. It would seem as if not just the beauty of the women is unrivalled in Macedonia (see above). But let’s stay in Bosnia for the moment and hear Vesna and Sas¡a sing a power-version of a Bosnian love-song. The girl confides in her grandmother how much she longs to be kissed by the “honey lips” of the young man with the little red fez (crven fesic´) ...

VRANJE  
An unbridled dance in 9/8 time, and the Sandy Lopic¡ic´ Orkestar’s homage to the vibrant Roma brass tradition, one of the centres of which is the southern Serbian town of Vranje. Vranje was an Ottoman royal capital and also home of the beautiful gypsy singer Kos¡tana, a Balkan Carmen, made immortal by the writer Bora Stankovic´ in his play of the same name.

MORE SOKO PIJE (VODA SA VARDARA) 
“Falcon, you who drinks water from the River Vardar, did you see the hero who died of his nine wounds?” A typical Heyduck song about anti-Ottoman resistance in Macedonia, which is also sung in Serbia and Bulgaria. Here in a modern arrangement by Vesna Petkovic´.   ....lyrix

JOS NE SVICE RUJNA ZORA  
 “It is still dark, the leaves are not yet fluttering in the wind, the nightingale is not yet announcing the approach of morning. – Not a sound, not even the music of the shepherd, everything is silent, at rest. – They ought to bloom, the dewy flowers, and spring ought to adorn itself with them. I will not be plucking them, for I never plucked them for myself. – I will never pull flowers from the earth in which the only one I ever gave them to is buried.” A song which, like Sandy Lopicic´’s ancestors, comes from the wild and beautiful Montenegro – sung by Natas¡a Mirkovic- De Ro.     ....lyrix



Richard Schuberth
Translated by Pauline Cumbers