Balkanic Eruption!

Balkanic Eruption!

20 May, 2010 | 7.01AM

• Written by: Beatportal
• Filed under: Music News: balkan, sabb, sebastian leger

House music has gone crazy for “ethnic” samples again. Maybe it’s a recession thing: when people have less money to spend on vacations, they turn to music to offer a kind of virtual travelogue.

A likelier theory is that sample-heavy house is relatively easy to produce, especially in the Ableton era—just take a phrase of horns or vocals, stretch it to fit a boompty-boompty drum track, and voila: instant anthem. (Less cynically, acoustic samples can go a long way to warming up a digital production, and crowds love novel instrumentation and recognizable melodies. Nothing wrong with keeping things interesting!)

It’s not just African and Latin music, either. Denmark’s Noir Music label is currently causing a stir with Sabb’s ‘Balkanika’, based on a Balkan clarinet melody: Mendo’s remix of the tune been in the Beatport Top 100 for weeks now. Right around the same time, Sebastien Leger’s ‘Balkamaniac’ went all the way to the Top 10. And Riva Star recently had a huge hit with their version of Balkan Beat Box’s ‘Balkan Chicks’.

They’re just the latest in a long line of club tracks based upon samples of Balkan music. (For those in need of a geography refresher course, the Balkans include the countries of the Balkan Peninsula—Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Greece, Kosovo, Macedonia, and Montenegro—as well as Croatia, Serbia, and sometimes Slovenia. Don’t worry, I had to look it up too.)

The most notorious example in recent memory is probably Ricardo Villalobos’ ‘Fitzheuer Zieheuer’, which spun Balkan horns and loping drums into a 37 minute epic—long even by Villalobos’ standards.

But Balkan strains have been weaving their way into club music for years. Back in 2006, Basement Jaxx’s Atlantic Jaxx label released an entire compilation dedicated to Balkan and Romani-flavored dance music, ‘Gypsy Beats & Balkan Bangers, and they released a second volume the following year.

It’s not hard to understand the style’s appeal. To Western ears, there’s something distinctly alien about the music’s modal scales and slippery bent notes. Emotionally, it’s intense stuff, too; it’s hard to find a more melancholic sound than the one conjured by Le Mystere Des Voix Bulgares, whose classic ‘80s recordings Mirko Loko samples for his ‘Takhtok’. Even the celebratory music of the region has a strange, ambiguous emotional quality: joyous, even manic, but tinged with darker vibes.

Here’s a sampling of tunes that have availed themselves of Balkan music’s keening melodies and boisterous horn arrangements. With the Cadenza boys (pictured above) dressing like itinerant street musicians for “Vagabundos”, their Ibiza residency this summer, you can bet you haven’t heard the last of the accordions for a while.

Sabb, ‘Balkanika feat. Dark Beat’

Sebastian Leger, ‘Balkamaniac’

Balkan Beat Box, ‘Bulgarian Chicks’

Riva Starr, ‘Bulgarian Chicks’

Mirko Loko, ‘Takhtok’

Buscemi, ‘Sahib Balkan’

DJ W!ld, ‘Balkan 2’

Basti Grub, ‘Marchgang’

Team Shadetek, ‘Gal Yu Nuh Beg (Balkan Nights Mix)’

Municipale Balcancia, ‘Hava Nagila (Beam Up Mix)’

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