The well known New York based Balkan brass band "Zlatne Uste" [South Slavic for Golden Lips] has been hosting a music event every year for some time now.

This event, known as the Golden Fest, has featured groups and ensembles performing music from predominantly the Balkans and Eastern Europe, but have been expanding their range every year to include other traditions as well, such as Middle Eastern, Scandinavian, ect. All kinds of folk and popular music is represented.

Now, in 2008, the festival has grown, with some 40 bands performing on 3 different stages, while people dance or listen, eat and drink to the sound of ensembles playing away at this once a year get together.

After having played Albanian/Balkan music since I was a kid, and having moved on to other world music genres, like the taraab of Zanzibar I now perform, I am pleased to see this festival having grown to what it has become.

I am delighted to be a part of this fest.
The Sounds of Taraab will be doing their thing on Jan.19th @ 8:30. No, I won't be performing Berances, Shotas, Coceks, or improvising a Kaba Vence, no, but rather, I'll do up a song for y'all in Swahili...Hamjambo! Habari gani?

Swahili is a Bantu based language, by the way, with lots of Arabic loan words, a hybrid mercantile language of the east African coast. I remember, back in the Balkan wedding days [with dumbek master Seido Salifoski] playing in house parties, and older people talking about a language called "Aljamiada". It was a hybrid language too, used along the west Balkan coast from Istria down to Southern Albania and Greece. Latin, I believe, with lots of Albanian, Slavic, and Turkish words thrown in for good measure.
One Aljamiada phrase? "Hajde fa gyzel"! Literally, "come make music"....Hajde [Slavic, come on!] fa [from Latin, to do] gyzel [Turkish, beautiful]
This was when coastal towns like Durres was "Durazzo", Dubrovnik "Ragusa", Split was "Spallato", and the tiny port of Shen Gjin [St. John] in Albania was "San Giovanni di Medua"....I have no idea where Medua is.

The taraab music of Zanzibar is a hybrid, too, with Arabic and Indian influences contributing to a driving African beat.

If you crave a good time listening and dancing to every odd & even meter you could shake a stick at, come to the Golden Fest for a great time.

Two nights of music from many places...Jan 18th & 19th!
620 Isham St, in upper Manhattan.

For more info, www.goldenfest.zlatneuste.org

Sounds of Taraab go on at 8:30, on Saturday, Jan.19th.
Hope to see you there!

Kwaheri ya kuonana...Till we see each other again.