Legendary Gypsy Queens & Kings (2009)

 LEGENDARY GYPSY QUEENS & KINGS

MAHALA RAI BANDA (Romania), ESMA REDZEPOVA (Macedonia), JONY ILIEV (Bulgaria), FLORENTINA SANDU (Romania), KALOOME (France), AURELIA & TANTZICA (Romania)

Over the course of the decades they have lost their shine and gained their own patina, they have countless scars and dents and they are made of brass – the instruments belonging to the high-speed brass music masters of FANFARE CIOCÂRLIA. They are loved and mistreated. More than 100 concerts per year, countless flights, battered bass tuba funnels, dozens of valves re-soldered, funnels straightened, valves made to work with rubber bands.

The heroes of Gypsy brass music decided to invite the greatest Roma voices to join them in the studio for their new album “Queens and Kings”. The band brought together some of the finest musicians from the Gypsy diaspora like LJILJANA BUTLER and SABAN BAJRAMOVIC from Serbia, ESMA REDZEPOVA from Macedonia, JONY ILIEV from Bulgaria, FLORENTINA SANDU und DAN ARMEANCA from Romania, MITSOU from Hungary and KALOOME – Gitanos from Perpignan / France. They appear to be worlds apart and the differences could hardly be bigger. And yet there are bonds which build bridges and reconcile cultural differences: They are Gypsies; they speak the same language and have created a life for themselves in music.

The album was internationally acclaimed in the spring of 2007 and went straight to #1 on the WMCE.

The Legendary Gypsy Queens & Kings sold out The Barbican, and then the Royal Festival Hall as part of Meltdown festival. The show went on tour across the UK as part of the Music Beyond Mainstream project (www.musicbeyondmainstream.org.uk).

‘… just one verse was enough to make this the concert of the year’  The Independent

‘In a two-hour set that could have gone all night, and the cavernous Barbican Hall into the best Gypsy Party this side of the Danube’  The Guardian

‘Storming into the Barbican this month are one of the hottest brass bands on the planet’  feature in The Independent

‘If the current western obsession with Gypsy music is a wave, then 11-piece Romanian brass orchestra Fanfare Ciocarlia is riding the crest’  The Guardian

`Most groups take their time to edge their way into a performance. The members of that hyperactive Romanian brass band Fanfare (pronounced “Fan-far-ay”) Ciocarlia prefer to open with a wild, orgiastic climax and then work their way up from there.’   The Times

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