Balkan music is dance music. Electronic music is dance music. Mix the two and you’ve got a double-dose of upbeat and body-moving rhythms, although their mating isn’t something that’s part of everyday musical fare. Even digging into the most obscure, left of the dial sources won’t reveal that hybrid on the regular. Yet there are some indie and outsider musicians experimenting with those sounds, curious and crafty creators digging around their own musical laboratories eager to meld the two to make something fresh.
Enter Will Magid, the man behind the band Balkan Bump, fusing electronic beats with traditional music of the Balkans and Southeast Europe, creating a horn-heavy and break-beat hybrid.
Balkan Bump will perform Wednesday at Animas City Theatre.
Magid’s interest in Balkan music stems from Eastern European ancestry and studying music in his ancestral homeland.
“I got the opportunity to study music in Northern Macedonia with the Kocani Orkestar, and just really got the itch,” he said. “I was obsessed with the culmination of virtuosity, you know some of the most delicate and difficult thing to play on instruments, but also danceability and emotion. It’s rare to hear music that’s so complicated yet so emotional and danceable at the same time.”
Post musical studies, he ended up back in the States, playing in bands specializing in Balkan music, while also pursuing electronic music production. When he mixed the two, people in high places paid attention.
Source : Durango Herald
