The deeper I got into the Balkans the more I began to feel the magnetic pull of Istanbul. As of Novi Pazar, everything started to tilt towards the city on the Bosphorus. The food, the music, the language, the mannerisms, all began to assume a Turkish touch. I realized that if ever I were to unwind the knotty issue of the ...
The guy that worked the hotel reception desk looked at me, as if to make sure he had heard correctly. “Tallava? You want tallava?” he said, like I wanted a dose of the clap. “Are you sure you really want to hear this shit? I know of a place on the edge of town. But I’m warning you, it is a ...
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, ...
From Budapest to Belgrade is eight hours. You travel along the Pannonian plain; the great plain of Hungary; Transdanubia; the westernmost steppe in Europe; all flatlands and fields, and the heat doesn’t let up in your non-air-conditioned compartment, as you pass by dusty, flyblown villages with sweep-wells in a sea of wheat and cornfields. At the border to Serbia a burly ...
And so it was that -- filled with a tremor of excitement -- I embarked on another trip to Belgrade, that wild, loud, brawling, lawless and free city in the Balkans, where the kafanas flowed with rakija and the streets were filled with beautiful girls in knock-off Versace and silicone tits. Some called the bus line the “Gastarbeiter Express” because it hit ...
In Vladičin Han, the South Serbian town, where Marko Marković hails from, nearly everyone plays brass . “Growing up I didn’t have a choice,” says Marko. “The trumpet chose me.” Marko Marković (30) is the son of Balkan brass legend Boban Marković, five times winner of “Best Trumpeter” award at Guča, Serbia’s annual summer-time brass music blow-out. Almost before he ...