Somewhere in the noughties So I was on Potsdamer Straße after boxing, sitting in a Moroccan shisha bar, smoking a water pipe and drinking a Turkish tea with a shot of lemon. Turks, Arabs, Germans, Africans walked by dragging their kids in tow. I had been sitting here for a couple of weeks now after boxing and I was gradually beginning to see the same faces – locals ...
Kreuzberger Nächte sind lang, as the song goes. Kreuzberg nights are long. And nowhere was this truer than at Zigan Aldi’s “X-berger Nächte” parties every Saturday night at the Cake Club on Oranienstraße, where the Turkish DJ and part time taxi driver, spun his a mix of Balkan, Latin, Swing and Oriental beats, the party totally cooking, until six in the ...
Snow dusts the ground on Ada Ciganli, Gypsy Island, a popular get-away on the banks of the Sava river, a short taxi ride from the center of Belgrade, where, after a brief walk through darkened woods we reach a creaky wooden gangway leading to a rickety wooden houseboat with a sign in Cyrillic. Lighted windows blaze into the winter night and ...
Robert Rigney: So basically I would like to know about your beginnings. Also about living in Tarlabaşı in Istanbul, and differences between playing Roma and gadjo weddings. So the first question is how did you start? Cüneyt Sepetçi: Like many Roma musicians it came from my father. My grandfather also played clarinet. My great grandfather also played clarinet. The whole Cüneyt family, if they are instrumentalists, play clarinet. I have a lot ...
It is with genuine sadness and regret that I heard the news today of the untimely passing of Džej Ramadanovski, who died December 6 of a heart attack at the unripe age of 55. Džej’s death is but one in a long line of Roma musician casualties over the last ten years. Džej certainly burned the candle at both ends, ...
Pavel was one of those Czech Western freaks you came across now and then in Prague. He wore an oversize Texas belt buckle, tooled cowboy boots and listened to Waylon Jennings and Hank Williams Jr. to let his hair down after work. He knew more about America, than I – his English teacher – did, that’s for sure, and once ...