SUMMERTIME – INESSA GALANTE & FRIENDS

Sunday, 2006 August 13^th, 7 PM

Dzintari Concert Hall

Jazz music concert

Bratsch (France)

Dan Gharibian, guitar

Bruno Girard, violin

Pierre Jacquet, bass

Nano Peylet, clarinet

François Castiello, accordion

With subtle irony Bratsch describe their music as "pre-traditional". Because they believe the music they are playing today will one day be regarded by musicologists as a type of traditional music. Their program could also be defined as contemporary European acoustic, (folk music, in other words). Bratsch are explorers ans craftsmen, their playing technically brilliant and charged with emotion. They are a collective, at the centre of which the aesthetics, sensitivity and self-expression of each individual blossom into a harmonious unit when they play together.

The Bratsche (viola) is the typical accompanying instrument in Tsigane music - although Bratsch do not feature it in their music, they only make use of the name. With its flat bridge and three strings, it can only be used to play chords. When a Bratsch member says, "You play the bratsche", he is really saying, "You do the accompaniment", be it on guitar, accordion, or violin. The accompaniment provides the rhythm, for, just as in the traditional music of Rumania or Hungary, Bratsch do not use any other percussion instruments. As opposed to many modern acoustic folk ensembles, Bratsch do not interchange their instruments during their concerts. Each of them prefers to develop his own musical skills and techniques to the utmost, producing new tones and colourations on their instruments, and to exploit these instruments to their full potential. Dan Gharibian, for instance, plays cymbalum phrases on his guitar, François Castiello emulates the sounds of a thrombone, or a saxophone, on his accordion and Nano Peylet duplicates the sound of the Armenian duduki on the clarinet. Playing acoustic instruments gives the musicians the facility to instantly transfigure their sounds.

The Bratsch adventure began about 30 years ago, when Dan Gharibian met Bruno Girard and together they formed a band, playing every musical style from South American to Arabic. In the mid-seventies, the group concentrated on Central European music and discovered the Jewish American crooner and radio star Theodore Bikel, who sang in various Eastern European languages as well as in English, and who combined many different musical styles on his records. What made Bikel unique vas his method of always using musicians from the relevant ethnic region to play on his productions. This blend of cultures, in particular of musical cultures, is characteristic of Central Europe and especially for the part the Gypsies have played in this development. The Gypsies have always dipped into the wealth of all the musical cultures they have encountered and integrated these influences within their own compositions. An attitude with which the band identifies. Bratsch will not tolerate any rigidity or dogma in their music. Even when their pieces are selected with exactitude, Bratsch are nevertheless free and flexible in their arrangements and performance of the works, moulding them into their own unique and inimitable style. Not least do the band's numerous original compositions illustrate where they have set their goals. Rather than producing faithful reproductions, they prefer to create pieces charged with the very real and raw emotion typical of Balkan music.

The books of Panaït Istrati, Albert cohen, or Nikos Kazantzakis, with their descriptions of the seething mixture of peoples in the Balkans, set the literary pattern. Bratsch allox this inspiring atmosphere to be musically resurrected. In times of ethnic cleansing, such music is more inclined to emerge from the imagination than from reality. And still Bratsch are often approached in France by some of the elder concert-goers, who think they have heard them play in bars and gatherings in the Balkans. For some, their dreams have already turned into reality.
Old records contribute to their source of insipration, as do musical pieces they have heard on their travels, or through their encounters with other musicians. The Romany ans Sinti musicians they frequently come across play a major part in this. So it is hardly surprising that the group is always being invited to play at Gypsie festivities and that they are acceptid by these people as equals. Apart from the more traditional material, one can recognize Jazz as an important element. Bratsch bemoan the fact that the tradition of improvisation has been lost in Western Europe since the Renaissance. Whereas the tradition of improvisation is still very much alive in Eastern European folk music, only Jazz offers that opportunity in the West. Having said this, the various musicians and the jazz styles that Bratsch draw upon for inspiration are extremely diverse: besides Sinti-Jazz, they are not only influenced by Charlie Parker, John Coltrane and Archie Shepp, but also by the collective improvisations to be found in Free Jazz.

And here too they are confronted by the same experiences that Gypsy musicians have encountered in the past. Tsigane music, as it is known today, has very little in common with the music the Gypsies played centuries ago in their native India, which was based on vocal music set to an extremely complex rhytmic accompaniment, as can still be heard in Flamenco today. Firstly, the encounter with other cultures, the willingness of the misicians to play for strangers, thereby securing their material needs, led to the development of the music, which is today described as authentic Tsigane folk music. Nowadays one comes across a great many songs and tunes that, often right in the middle, will abruptly change into a different melody, most of which originate in an entirely different region. Hence it is not surprising that such musicians only use those elements of a song that they particularly like. A horror for all the purists, who speak of adulteration without considering an important aspect: folk music only lives while it is being communicated, passed on, disseminated, and thus forced to adapt and change. Gypsy musicans have criss-crossed the Balkans, back and forth, from the contryside into the towns and back again, for centuries. They would pick up a melody in the town, and then play it at a village wedding, where local musicians would then pick it up themselves, whereby the emotional content of the piece would also be transformed. The musicians began, not unlike the Blues players, to introduce their own emotions.