Ekrem & Gypsy Groovz

In Vranjska Banja, a Roman-Gypsy village of about 600 families, situated in the border region between Serbia and Kosovo, music is played from generation to generation in order to survive. These people's lives are shaped around music. Their song is a universal explanation of life, their only true passion, their way of remembering and keeping the families together. Gypsy Groovz, the orchestra of Ekrem Sajdic, has been selected as the most authentic live band in the history of the "Golden Brass Summit", a music festival that has taken place in Guca/Serbia for 41 years. The clue in the selection of this particular band was the warmth of their music and its ability to transfer emotions into the eruption of positive feelings. In the music of Gypsy Groovz you can hear the historical relations to Indian ragas, Sufi trance music, Egyptian and Armenian melodies, Turkish, Bulgarian and Macedonian patterns, the temper of Spanish flamenco, Sardinian and Dalmatian melodic polyphony, Serbian and Romanian love for variation. Ramesh Shotham, the Indian percussion player from Madras, had never met Ekrem's orchestra before but immediately recognized their story and their music as his own - and added a touch of the ancient Gypsies' Indian roots. The tunes on "Rivers Of Happiness" are played in a private or improvised style and represent the cheeriest rarity for the music gourmet. When recording this CD the fellows were in a very good mood for being able to incorporate live improvisations by Dusko Goykovich whom they met for the first time. Goykovich who had been dreaming about this for forty years was in a boyish mood and fresh as ever despite his seventy years. At the beginning both parties held back in mutual estimation but during the recording this changed into a creative explosion with laughter and cheering. An old bebop fox when it comes to improvisation, Goykovich very soon found his place in the music profile of the orchestra but stayed loyal to his own way of playing. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.