How Does Musical Fusion Arise?
Come listen to a conversation between ethnomusicologist Jana Belišová and cellist Roman Harvan about the Angrusori music project, which managed to unite the seemingly incompatible: traditional Roma music with alternative music.
March 21, 2024, at 9:00 AM
Faculty of Arts, Comenius University
Gondova 2, Bratislava
3rd floor, Room G309
Angrusori released the album Live at Tou in 2021 under the British label Hudson Records, for which they received the Radio_Head Awards a year later in the World Music / Folk category. The Guardian named it Album of the Month, and it garnered positive reviews in other music magazines such as The Wire, Jazzquad, and Muzikalia. Last year, the Angrusori project performed live at the prestigious Cheltenham Jazz Festival in the UK, where they are returning these days to play the following concerts:
17/1 London - Grand Junction, UK
https://grandjunction.org.uk/e...
18/1 Birmingham - MAC, UK
https://macbirmingham.co.uk/ev...
19/1 Manchester - Band on the Wall, UK
https://bandonthewall.org/even...
20/1 Glasgow - Celtic Connections, Pavilion Theatre - with DakhaBrakha
https://www.celticconnections....
On January 16, 2024, Angrusori will perform at the cultural center Ogna Scene in Norway, which is one of the most beautiful concert halls in the country. The snow-covered village of Ogna has been home to many famous artists, and its distinctive landscape has inspired several renowned painters (Nikolai Ulfsten, Kitty Kielland). It is also the home of the award-winning poet, children’s book author, essayist, and literary scholar Helge Torvund.
Author: Oliver Rehák, Denník N
It’s rare for influential British media to write about recordings featuring Slovak musicians—let alone in such glowing terms.
"A hypnotic and moving insight into the soul of a marginalized community, told through a musical fusion deeply rooted in tradition. At its core are timeless songs about heartbreak, illness, and poverty, enriched by the subtlest layers from improvising musicians," wrote The Wire in a full-page review of the Angrusori project.
The Guardian stated that "with elements of tango, flamenco, jazz, and other influences, this pan-European group transforms stories of migration, pain, and persecution into something transcendent." The album was awarded four out of five stars and named "Contemporary Album of the Month."
The Angrusori project first hinted at its export potential when the album was released last year by the British label Hudson Records. In Slovakia, it won the Radio_Head Award for World Music/Folk Recording of the Year.
Communicating Through Gestures Yet Truly Understanding Each Other
It all began in 2015 when Lukáš Berberich, a curator at the Tabačka Kulturfabrik cultural center in Košice, met Norwegian saxophonist Petter Frost Fadnes. Fadnes is part of Kitchen Orchestra, an ensemble that plays improvised music and collaborates with musicians from various genres. He was intrigued by the mention of Roma singers from Eastern Slovakia, so when Kitchen Orchestra first came to Košice, they didn’t just perform their own concert.
"We brought them together with the Dreveňák couple. Marcela sings, Jozef sings too and accompanies on guitar. They got together with the Norwegians, passionately playing and singing, choosing songs that would continue to evolve. It was wonderful to see Marcela, a mother of eleven who doesn’t speak English, communicate with a dignified, elegant Norwegian. They used gestures but fully understood each other," says Jana Belišová.
As an ethnomusicologist, Belišová has extensively documented traditional Roma music through years of work with the Žudro civic association and the Phurikane giľa project. When Berberich approached her as an expert, she initially sent books and recordings to the Norwegian musicians, and after the concert at Tabačka, she took them to meet Slovak singers in Žehra.
She had already involved the Dreveňák couple in a similar project, After Phurikane, alongside classical musicians Jozef Lupták and Boris Lenko and African percussionist Thierry Ebam.
The new project received the Roma-Norwegian name Phuterdo Øre ("open ear") and began expanding to include other members—cellist Roman Harvan from the Slovak National Theater Orchestra, violinist Patrik Žiga, and composer Iva Bittová. The name later changed to Angrusori, meaning "ring" in the Roma language, symbolizing the equality of all ethnicities and cultures with its circular shape.
The phrase "to bring together musicians from diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds and create new musical works by fusing the best each member of this extraordinary ensemble has to offer" describes the concept of the project, which has received a major European grant. Yet listening to the Angrusori album or attending a concert reveals that this language only begins to capture the genre-blending musical experience.
In the first phase of collaboration, Kitchen Orchestra's leader, Nils Henrik Asheim, selected eleven old Roma songs—mostly ballads about birth and death, suffering and longing, exile and persecution. He composed interludes and linking sections for them. That’s the main difference from when the Dreveňáks perform on their own, as captured on their two Giľav albums. The sound is fuller and more colorful, including harmonium, saxophone, accordion, drums, and violin, as well as choral harmony when Norwegian vocalists join in with the Slovak Roma singers, and Iva Bittová improvises along.
The group agreed early on that they wanted to capture this collaboration on an album. Although they did record in the studio, listening to the concert recording from the Tou Scene cultural center in Stavanger made it clear that the live version was much more powerful—electrifying, captivating, perfectly imperfect. Sometimes each musician might go their own way, but when these two worlds intersect, something entirely new emerges, and that’s when it’s most compelling.
From Roots to Roots
"With Roma songs, you can either cry or dance. It’s authentic music, yet they’re absolute amateurs. When you ask them where they learned to play, they’ll say, 'Just on the streets, with friends, we were just having fun,'" Belišová explains.
The greatest challenge was preserving this untrained spontaneity while blending it with improvisations or notated parts performed by professional musicians from other countries.
"The Roma musicians love being with others, from other cultures. They cherish their music, but it takes them longer to absorb new sounds before they can make it their own. It’s not as heartfelt, from within, as when they sing their own songs. But sometimes, they adopt a foreign melody and ‘Roma-fy’ it. For instance, they have songs about politicians: 'Imar avel, o Václav Havel,' then 'here comes Kňažko to make things hard for them.' It’s a kind of reflection on political situations, but rephrased to make it rhyme. But there isn’t much of that."
The Dreveňáks sing differently than usual duos—Marcela’s voice is beautifully raspy, pitched lower than her husband Jozef’s. It brings to mind the Cuban stars brought together by American guitarist and producer Ry Cooder in Buena Vista Social Club, or similar recordings with African musicians—except here, the focus on originality and rawness is even greater.
8 July 2023 at 8.15 pm POHODA festival Trenčín
10 July 2023 at 7.00 pm The Central Slovakia Cultural Centre Banská Bystrica
11 July 2023 Dominican Cultural Center Košice
12 July 2023 workshop & concert at the Poštárka housing estate in Bardejov
12 July 2023 BAŠTA in Bardejov
Mike Ainscoe, At The Barrier
Angrusori – featuring Kitchen Orchestra + Czech avant-garde violinist, singer, and composer Bittová + Norwegian composer and organist Nils Henrik Asheim – on a live album. A world first? Certainly ambitious as highly acclaimed musicians from the Slovakian Roma music community and the Norwegian contemporary music scene come together to create ingeniously improvised music drawing directly from, or inspired by traditional Roma folk tunes.
The combination of an ancient migratory song tradition with contemporary, experimental improvisation might be new ground for many. Make that ‘most’. This album offers a collection of these songs in a remoulded and repackaged format, inviting both old and new listeners of Roma music, and appealing to diverse audiences within and outside the Slovakian vernacular.
What’s special is that these are songs come from an otherwise secluded society, songs usually shared in people’s homes and kitchens. They tell stories of a different European reality, encompassing experiences of social segregation, abject poverty and ill health, or love, jealousy and loss – and yes, we might be increasingly aware of stories of specific and universal human tragedies, yet the humanity shines through.
Throw those curtains wide and fling open your doors to a new world of opportunity and a musical experience that’s not so much challenging or different, but genuinely enlightening. If you’re not a subscriber to Songlines and feel that world music has fallen below the radar from being a once high profile entity, here’s a chance to kick start the genre.
Built on winding drones, Sar Me Khere Dzava sets the tone for the duration. Almost Mediterranean at times, the gentle lull of massed voices and strings might have some settling into their comfort zone. Steel yourselves though as we start to flitter through arrangements which balance the stark and the lush. Nods are paid to the minimal and the expansive.
Pas O Pani Besav sees an almost solo vocal sweep and glides before a cinematic orchestral wave and rich strings swings through the opening of dramatic Chude Man Vastetar that evolve into a dance style piece. One that transforms my attention (even if no-one else is, I’m taken back in the mists of time to ‘O’ Level Russian and singing Kalinka…) to deepest Russia.
A freeform and vaguely avant-garde, jazz-style experimentation kicks in during Rodav Me Miro Drom. It’s positively tribal, pagan even and typical of the ‘never know what to expect’ experience. An exercise in the sense of release and power of personal interpretation of music. The occasional bell of recognition sounds as a few bars pass that sound like something familiar to our blinkered ears, but in the main, Angrusori delivers on something we don’t hear every day.
The coming together of two very different musical and experiential worlds is an aesthetic-emotional richness of life itself. It is music that crosses borders. Music that’s enlightening and just the resounding shift we all need when we think we subscribe to a broad musical church.
The Cheltenham Jazz Festival is one of the most popular jazz festivals in the UK, attracting over 20,000 music fans. It celebrates all genres of jazz, featuring a mix of international jazz icons, emerging artists, and unique festival performances. The festival aims to reach the widest possible audience, showcasing top global musicians as well as lesser-known musical groups that are highly regarded for their musical quality. Angrusori will perform here on April 30, 2023.
Angrusori review is out now!
Just a moment after the end of the concert in Stavanger's Tou:
https://www.aftenbladet.no/kul...
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Tour 2
26 July, 2022 at 6:00 p.m.
Tou Scene, Stavanger, Norway
https://www.touofficial.com/pr...
28 July, 2022 at 4:30 p.m.
Olavsfest, Trondheim, Norway
https://olavsfest.no/arrangeme...
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Petr Dorůžka wrote about Angrusori in the Czech cultural magazine Uni:
"Our best violin improviser participates in a much wider range of activities than Czech audience just can see. She created the Angrusori project together with Roma artists from Slovakia and the Norwegian group Kitchen Orchestra. This May, they had concerts in Bratislava, Žilina and Košice, following there will be a tour in Norway and Britain."
The whole article: https://www.magazinuni.cz/hudb...
"The story behind Angrusori goes all the way back to 2010 actually, and involves the two cultural factories Tabacka (in Kosice, Slovakia), and Tou (in Stavanger). The two venues collaborate through the great European organisation Trans Europe Halles https://teh.net/. Lukas Berberich (who then worked for Tabacka) came up to Stavanger for a TEH-seminar at Tou and I met him over a few beers in the evening, and I think that's the first time he suggested we should do something with Stavanger musicians and Roma musicians from the Kosice area." musician Petter Frost Fadnes states in an interview for 15questions. His words are complemented by Nils Henrik Asheim: "Actually, I was not at all sure that the project would create a good match. I was asked to lead the process probably because I previously had done cross-genre collaborations and also treated repertoire from other traditions than my own in a successful way. But this had mostly involved musicians, who, although from different traditions, would still have a comparably similar conservatory background. In the case of Angrusori, so much was different. Social conditions, language, the musical practice. I foresaw that the people of this band very likely would have completely divergent ideas of what it is to be on stage and play a concert. I was afraid we were being naive in imagining a "cultural meeting".
So, what convinced me to participate, was that the project was very well organised and prepared, and that I could sense a genuine engagement and energy – especially from Jana Belisova who shared with us her research material and opened up the wonderful Roma music to us. Still, I could not even remotely imagine how the thing would work, I was not able to prepare a single note or sound before travelling to Kosice and starting the first workshop, beginning to communicate and sit down on a common floor to somehow try and make music together."
Read the full interview:
15 questions | Interview | Angrusori | "Slovakian Roma music is like Lego blocks: It keeps shifting into infinite shapes."
John Lewis, The Quardian
Using tango, flamenco, junkyard jazz and more, the pan-European group turn stories of migration, pain and persecution into something transcendent
One joy of listening to music in an unfamiliar language is that you can put any interpretation you like on the lyrics. The opening track on this LP, for instance, is an epic, pan-global miasma that conjures up countless images – the strings and organs provide a viscous drone that comes straight out of a Hindustani classical raga; the full-throated vocal harmonies sound like the work of a diaphonic Bulgarian choir; the heartbreaking chords recall Yiddish liturgical music. You could be forgiven for imagining that this is some sacred religious text set to music but, according to the translation in the CD booklet, it’s actually the story of feckless parents getting drunk on Johnnie Walker and finding that their children have been thrown in the river and eaten by fish.
It’s one of 11 traditional Romany songs on this album, often ancient ballads collected by the musicologist Jana Belišová while travelling among the Roma of Slovakia. The lyrics tend to be grim tales of birth and death, suffering and yearning, exile and persecution, but the remarkable musical settings elevate them into something transcendent and mystical.
Angrusori are a pan-European project led by Norway’s Kitchen Orchestra, an improvising ensemble who’ve collaborated with some of the world’s leading avant-garde musicians over the years. Here their featured star is the remarkable Iva Bittová, a Czech violinist, singer, actor and composer of Hungarian Gypsy ancestry, who brings with her some of central Europe’s finest Roma musicians. The Gypsy story is one of migration – from Gujarat to Andalucia – and the music here visits many stations along that journey. There are giddy tangos, mournful flamenco ballads and the kind of ecstatic, wordless vocals you associate with Qawwali Sufi music. There are also ambient recreations of birdsong (Oda Kale Čirikloro), a terrifying sci-fi drone that morphs into a klezmer waltz (Nadur Le Romendar O Cintiris), and an ululating a cappella vocal that mutates into a piece of Tom Waits-style junkyard jazz (Rodav Me Miro Dorm). The joyous, upbeat finale Joj, So Kerava comes as a surprise: black comedy in the face of misery. “Winter is coming, what will happen to me?” howls the narrator. “My girlfriend doesn’t want me. Neither does my beautiful wife.”
May 19, 2022 International Conference "Ubuntu" and Music Fusion
"Ubuntu" and music fusion - the concept of not only musical reciprocity. Inspirational sources, creative methods and the importance of improvisation
More info and program: https://angrusori.com/activiti...
May 19, 2022 / 2:30 - 4:00 p.m. Workshop with Iva Bittová: Žingora Vocal School - Voices for Joy and Peace / The Žingora Vocal School was founded by a Czech singer and multi-instrumentalist Iva Biitová in the United States to help her students find a way to better open theirself to self-expression.. Through sensitive guidance, he directs joint improvisation and teaches several Romani songs.
Limited number of participants - 25
Venue - room no. 350, Faculty of Arts of Comenius University, Bratislava
Application: https://worldmusicfestival.sk/workshop/?fbclid=IwAR38ChXd7zwmVRi7KG8zIb5g7nIjSpCncVKcsKa1f_hJXEULFjHYL_YzARw
May 17 - 18 A two-day pre-production meeting of musicians in the Moyzes Hall in Bratislava. We also have a working meeting within the international project Angrusori
Nothing can replace the immediacy of live performances, and the precious time for a gathering is approaching, when all the musicians of the Angrusori orchestra will come together on one stage to perform the following concerts:
May 19, 2022, at 8:00 PM
Moyzesova Hall, Bratislava
May 20, 2022, at 7:00 PM
New Synagogue, Žilina
May 21, 2022, at 7:00 PM
Kino Úsmev, Košice
An improvised polylogue featuring members of the Norwegian ensemble Kitchen Orchestra and Czech violinist, singer, and composer Iva Bittová, along with Slovak Roma musicians, began during a workshop in Košice in 2016. The album Live at Tou was recorded during a concert at Tou, a cultural factory in Stavanger, Norway, in April 2017. It was eventually released on the British label Hudson Records in 2021 and was soon named Album of the Month by The Guardian, receiving rave reviews in various music magazines such as The Wire, Jazzquad, and Muzikalia.
“The name of the Angrusori project is derived from a Roma song and translates to 'ring,'” explains project coordinator and expert guarantor Jana Belišová. She adds, “I love the symbolism of the circle, equality, meetings, returns, infinity, fidelity, beauty... and each of you can add what you perceive with the word 'ring.'”
March 30, 2022 The Angrusori music project members (Roman Harvan, Nils Petter Asheim and Petter Frost Fadnes) responded to the Radio_head Award for 2021 in the World Music / Folk category on the FM World Music program.
On March 25, 2022, Angrusori won the Radio_Head Award in the World Music / Folk category.
March 23, 2022 Radio_Head Awards jury meeting in the World Music and Folk category, which was attended by Milan Tesař and Dušan Svíba from the Czech Republic, Johann Kneihs from Austria and Saška Pastorková and Juraj Gonšor from Slovakia. It was also supplemented by Anna Mašátová from the Czech Republic, Marija Vitas from Serbia and DJ Jedi from the USA opinions. Among other things, they talked about the Angrusori project.
15 February 2022 Janka Belišová talks about the Angrusori project in the "How do you like it" show of the Czech Radio Proglas.
9. február 2022 Angrusori porada. Chystáme turné na Slovensku. :-)
7 February 2022 The album Angrusori - Live at Tou is nominated for the Radio_Head Award in the World Music / Folk 2021 category.
6 January 2022 Angrusori project in the morning broadcast of the Czech radio Proglas.
December 2021 ANGRUSORI is in the World Music Chart Europe list of the top 200 albums.
Link: https://www.wmce.de/Year_2021-...
4 October 2021 We had an online meeting where we talked about the upcoming tour in 2022. It will be amazing.
12 May 2021 Jana Belišová, Nils Henrik Asheim and Roman Harvan talked about the Angrusori project on Radio FM.
Link: https://www.rtvs.sk/radio/arch...
7 May 2021 Angrusori: Live at Tou review – Romany songs of birth, death and black comedy
Using tango, flamenco, junkyard jazz and more, the pan-European group turn stories of migration, pain and persecution into something transcendent...
Read the review in The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/mu...
February 2021 We attended a seminar prepared by the EEA Grants Department from the Ministry of Investment, Regional Development and Informatization of the Slovak Republic, which should make it easier for us to orientate ourselves in the rules of project management, reporting and compliance with all necessary requirements.
16 January 2021 The project contract was signed by all parties and thus entered into force. We are very happy! If you want to know more about programmes and projects financed by the EEA Grants in Slovakia, visit www.eeagrants.org.