Balkanika

Carmina Slovenica live in Balkan ethno improvisations

Author of the project and conductor: Karmina Šilec
Percussion: Nino Mureškič, Jam-Bashi
Wind instruments: Vasko Atanasovski
Accordion: Janez Dovč

Balkan music is seductive and hardly ever leaves the listener untouched. Balkanika does not merely touch you, it strongly embraces you. The body responds – with a smile perhaps or swaying with the rhythm. It is temperamental, clear, erotic, brave and open-spirited. We love it and it keeps returning strong feelings.

Human voice elevated into a song is far more expressive than in speech.  Drawing from this profound realization, the Balkan people place the art of song at the pinnacle of artistic expression. Their genius in this field – the fruit of a thousand-year-long story of tears and suffering – is feeding from these roots and entering a different world: Byzantium. The thousand-year-long tradition of the Balkan song celebrated the tribulations of a history marred by blood - following the five centuries of the nightmare under the Ottoman yoke. And this is what left a mark on their vocal art - the only free way of expression accessible to the Balkan people - through the centuries.

Monodic at first, then uniquely diaphonic, these songs developed their own polyphony which encountered Western harmony in the 20th century. Thus this wonderful synthesis is offered today to music lovers: elements of fabulous archaism, Byzantine liturgy, popular songs, heroic epic songs, elegies … all of them merging into true jewels. And yet, in addition to the previously unheard melodic, rhythmic and harmonic delights, there is more: the timbre! - the sonorous timbre characteristic of open, vibrato-free voices.