As the mother teaches her children how to express themselves in their language, so one Gypsy musician teaches the other. They have never shown any need for notation.
Franz Liszt
The Roma people have made a big contribution to the music and dance of Eastern Europe. They are also known by the politically incorrect term "gypsies." (If you click on the link to the Voice of Roma site, you'll see that Esma has a U.S. tour planned for Spring 2016. She is a fantastic singer from the Republic of Macedonia and you can read about her in the first post below).
Today's post features two Romani dances from Serbia and Romania.
Video #1 features the dance Opa Cupa from Serbia. The lyrics describe a man who's very popular with the women, except for one who refuses to dance with him.
Opa Cupa is very popular with brass bands. This version, with live music, is slightly different.
Video#2 is Ca la Mahala from Romania. I couldn't find the lyrics to this song, which is one I would file under the category "earworm."
Unfortunately, the word "mahala" in Romanian has a negative connotations and describes a slum or ghetto, what we would call "the hood" in the United States. In Romania, the Roma live in the rough areas of town under horrible conditions, often without proper sanitation. There is a problem with drug use and crime, the by-products of poverty and discrimination.
Roma people originally came from India and migrated west towards Europe. To this day they have no country to call their own.
Just as the ancients danced to call upon the spirits in nature,
we too can dance to find the spirits within ourselves
that have been long buried and forgotten.
Anna Halprin
There is something very spiritual about holding hands with a group of friends and moving in unison.
I knew a woman who was involved with Sacred Circle Dance, an activity that her group did outdoors once a week from late spring to early fall at 8 a.m. She invited me to try it, but their group met at a distance from where I live, and I don't like to get up early.
Some people see dancing as a non-denominational way of connecting with something greater than themselves, whether or not they believe in a Supreme Being.
It is not surprising that there are folk dance groups that meet in houses of worship.
Since is the beginning of the Jewish New Year, today's post features Always on Sunday, a group that dances in a Jewish house of worship. We meet every Sunday (except for Jewish holidays) at the Temple Beth Torah in Wethersfield, Connecticut.
Here is an example of what we do. This video was taken last November from a dance party with Bulgarika. The dance is a kopanitsa from Bulgaria.
Today's dance is a close relative of Jove (or Yove ) Malaj Mome, a very popular tune from the Shope region of Bulgaria.. The music sounds very similar, although the choreography is different. In Bulgarian transliteration the character Йtransliteration can be either a "j" or a "y" (j in Bulgarian has a y sound). The dance is Yovino Horo.
The rhythm is a combination of 7/16 and 11/16. Compound rhythms are quite common in Bulgarian folk dances.
Jova is a female name in Bulgaria.
The next video is Jove Malaj Mome so you can compare the two dances. The rhythm is the same, the music and steps are slightly different, and there is singing. There is something very charming about Bulgarian folk songs. They can make the most commonplace events sound special. The lyrics describe a stuck-up young woman at a dance looking for a rich man from Sofia. She's definitely looking for upward mobility.
If these guys look familiar, and you are a regular reader, you'll recognize them as the "Bonding Folkdance Class" from China.
The bonus video this week is a reading of the poem "Advice" by Bill Holm as interpreted by the magician Tom Verner. There is a little surprise at the end.
To live is to dance, to dance is to live.
--Charles Schulz [in Peanuts (Snoopy speaking)]
Why don't more young people go to folk dances?
That is something that has been plaguing folk dance groups in recent years. The dancers get grayer by the year. When they die, who will fill their shoes?
According to what I've read on the Internet, and from speaking with veteran dancers, the peak years of international folk dance were during the 1960's and 1970's, when they were college students.
If this trend continues, the only place to find folk dance groups will be in retirement communities.
Part of the problem could be that the young are too busy doing other things. Or maybe dancing with people their grandparents' age is just not for them.
Another issue was budget cuts: courses in folk dancing have been cut from school curriculums. In my opinion, dance should be offered as a physical education class as an alternative to team sports.(See the link to my post below: "On Ethnic Dance and Exercise.")
A variety of reasons were mentioned and listed here.
There was a time, not so many years ago, when ballroom dancing was primarily an activity for seniors. Dancing With the Stars changed all that. Now people of all ages take classes and participate in ballroom dancing.
Check out the video and you'll see what I'm talking about: the majority of the dancers are 50+. This was taken during a live music event when attendance is higher than during regular dance nights.
This group from Canada is at a workshop taught by Yves Moreau. Many of the participants are also seniors.
Fortunately, Balkan folk dancing has taken a foothold in communities with large ethnic populations, such as New York City and Boston. Balkan Music Night, held annually in Concord (a suburb) of Boston has a large turnout of young people. In 2010 I went to a Zlatne Uste event in New York city that had a very youthful crowd, so there is hope. These young people may well be the future of folk dancing as we know it.
And in Bulgaria, young people have taken up an interest in folk dance because of the TV show Nadigrai Me, a show which features dancers from folk dance clubs all over the country. This show has finished its fifth season. It is one of the most popular shows in Bulgaria.
In 2012, a folk dance club opened in Sofia, Club na Horoto. The idea behind it was to have a place for dancers to congregate any hour of the day or night. This concept might work in a city with a large Eastern European immigrant population like Boston or Toronto.
Club Na Horoto reminds me of a disco....one of those places I used to frequent years ago. I would love to see a venue like this open up in the United States. They look like they're having a great time! From what I've read on their website, this venue is extremely popular. Right now they're taking reservations for their New Year's Eve party.
If you have been successful in attracting young dancers to your group, please post your ideas in the "comments" section.
Today's music features different versions of the music for the Bulgarian folk dance Dospatsko Horo. Like many Bulgarian dances, it's named after a town, Dospat, in the Rhodope region of southern Bulgaria. Dospatsko was originally a men's dance.
The video below is from the Chinese "Bonding Folk Dance Class" and uses the music familiar to recreational folk dancers.
Here is the entire piece; the artist listed is the orchestra of Anastas Naumov. The dominant instrument here is the gadulka, a Bulgarian version of a fiddle, with the gaida and kaval in the background. You get to watch some beautiful scenery at the same time. You can even dance to it if you want.
Version two is a modern and mellow Dospatsko, from a Bulgarian dance music album. The dominant instrument here is the kaval.
I have heard many different renditions of Dospatsko on YouTube. Some are good and some are just awful, like version #3, which sounds like elevator music. I know art is subjective, but this album cover is ugly!
It took some time for me to warm up to version # 4, which is the most unusual Dospatsko I've heard. It was recorded in a synogogue in Poland with excellent acoustics, and played on a cello, accordion, organ and a kaval. The music alternates between being slow and fast, solemn and dramatic. This version isn't meant for dancing but it's definitely worth a listen.
The Internet knows no national borders.
Alan Dershowitz
Today's dance is Ripna Maca. It is related to Chetvorno Horo in that it uses similar steps and has the same rhythm (pineapple-apple-apple). For the musicologists out there, the time signature is 7/16. There are several border crossing dances, for example: Godecki Cacak, that have dual citizenship. The jury is still out as to whether it is Serbian or Bulgarian, but to most of us dancers, it doesn't really matter.
Ripna Maca #1 is from East Serbia. There is a Shope region in Serbia, and also across the border in Bulgaria. Dances from this area tend to be fast and done with a belt hold.
The lyrics describe a cat who steals sausage from the pantry. I've lived with a number of cats and they are always getting into trouble. One of their vices is stealing food meant for humans, especially meat. That is usually not a problem unless they get into the roast that was designated for company. Nobody wants to eat Kitty's leftovers.
Ripna Maca #2 is from Bulgaria. . The leader calls the steps (in English). They have some interesting names: cross step, hop and horse.
Ripna Maca #3: same dance as the previous video with different music. It's heavy on clarinet and brass and I like it very much.
Today's dance is the very popular Gankino Horo from the northwestern region of Bulgaria.
First, let's have a look at the dance. It's fairly easy once you get the feel of the 11/16 rhythm. That little "hiccup" in the middle takes some getting used to.
The 11/16 rhythm is also used in the dance kopanitsa.Gankino Horo is a kopanitsa, but not all kopanitsas are Gankino. Ganka is a female name in Bulgaria, and the dance may have been named after the woman who led it. This may or may not be true. There are a number of Bulgarian dances named after women or girls for example: Elenino Horo (Elena's Dance).
The dancers are from the Dunav group from Jerusalem in Israel (if you're a regular you have seen many of their videos on this blog). The music is from an old recording by Boris Karlov, a musician who died nearly 50 years ago. You can read more about him in one of the posts listed below. He created many arrangements of Bulgarian folk dances for accordion that are still used today.
Since the month of May is almost here, the next variation is Maisko Gankino Horo by Diko Iliev. You'll hear the same motif, but it sounds quite different played on brass instruments.
If you're not familiar with the name Diko Iliev, he was a composer from northwestern Bulgaria who composed many pieces based on folk dances. His most popular work is Dunavsko Horo, played during holidays and celebrations, and especially to welcome the New Year.
The next video of Gankino Horo uses different music. There is more than one tune associated with this dance, and I have found several versions on YouTube. In that respect it is like the dance Dunavsko Horo.
Finally, we have a duo of classical musicians. They play an rrangement of Gankino on piano and cello. This is the familiar melody you heard in the first two videos. Classical musicians can be sometimes intimidated by the unusual rhythms of Bulgarian folk music, but not these two. They do an excellent job with the piece and play it FAST.
Today's post features several dances from another former Yugoslav republic, Macedonia. The word for dance in Macedonian is similar to the Bulgarian (oro in Macedonia, horo in Bulgaria).
If you are looking for oro, as in gold, you have come to the wrong place. Do a search on Spanish conquistadors instead, they had an obsession about finding gold in the New World. But before you go, spend a few minutes here, you may find this blog more interesting and a lot more fun than Latin American history :)
Bavno Oro is familiar to folk dancers worldwide. The name comes from the slow part in the beginning of the dance, which speeds up at the end. This vintage recording, still played at dances today, was made by Boris Karlov, Bulgarian accordionist. His repertoire included music from Bulgaria, Serbia and Macedonia, and unfortunately, he died at a very young age from a kidney infection.
If you are a frequent visitor here you have seen these people before. They are a part of a "bonding folk dance class" in China. Their instructor is very good because I can follow him even though I don't understand a word of Chinese. Balkan folk dance is very popular in China, judging from the number of videos I have seen posted by this group on YouTube. The dance is Berovka and its time signature is 2/4.
The next video was from the New England Folk Festival 2012, and features an excellent group from Brooklyn, NY who sing "Macedonian roots music." I had the pleasure of listening and dancing to Niva recently at Balkan Music Night 2014.
Ratevka, the dance shown here, is usually played as part of a medley that includes Berovka. It has a different time signature than the previous dance: 7/8 or 7/16 depending on the speed. This live version is a little slower than the recording. It's the same rhythm as the Bulgarian dance Chetvorno Horo (pineapple-apple-apple).
The Tanec ensemble is well-known all over the world for their performances of music and dance from the Republic of Macedonia. This is a men's dance, Teskoto, played on two zurnas and a tupan. The zurna is an instrument that resembles a horn. It has a double reed, like an oboe, and finger holes and it is loud enough to wake the dead. The Turks introduced these instruments during their occupation of the Balkans. They later became part of the musical fabric of Macedonia as well as the Pirin region of Bulgaria.
If you haven't noticed previously, Macedonian folk dances tend to start off slow and pick up speed as they progress.
Today's song is about a rebel (haidouk) from Albania named Osman Taka. The haidouks were freedom fighters in the Balkans who waged guerrilla warfare against the Ottoman Turks.
Osman Taka was also fond of traditional Albanian dancing, and had a reputation as an excellent dancer. There isn't much information about him, and the little bit I found was on Wikipedia.
The Ottoman Turks sentenced Osman Taka to death, and his one last request was to dance before his execution. According to local tradition, he gave such a beautiful performance that his the Turks released him from jail. Later on he was recaptured and killed.
The dance is also named Osman Taka. The singer is Eli Fara, well known in Albania for her renditions of folk songs.
The leader really gives a good show with the acrobatics.
Osman Taka is also popular among recreational folk dance groups; in this case it's an equal opportunity dance in that women are allowed to join in. This version is much simpler than the one shown in the previous video, although a good sense of balance helps with the high leg lifts.
By the way, you can find the lyrics in the Songbook For Nearsighted People in German and in English. I was hoping to find the story of Osman Taka and his experiences with the Turks. No such luck, it's a love song, and I think there's lost something in translation.
What's funny in the video is that the announcer mentions that "we wouldn't want to shortchange Albania." Why is that?
Today's featured dance, Arap, has dual citizenship, according to the notes I found on the Internet. The reason for this is that it is popular in both Macedonia and Bulgaria.
Unfortunately, Macedonia happens to be one of the most contested names on the map. There are three places which share this name. One of them is the Republic of Macedonia where the people speak a language closely related to Bulgarian. The languages are similar enough that Bulgarians and Macedonians can understand each other.
There is also a Macedonia region in northern Greece. The Pirin region of Bulgaria, Blagoevgrad Province, which borders the Republic of Macedonia is also known as Pirin Macedonia.
The first version of Arap is the one familiar to most folk dancers. It is Zajko Kokorajko, about a rabbit who's off to Salonika (in Greek Macedonia) to marry a fox. The wedding guests are as unusual as the couple: a female bear, a female wolf, a hedgehog to play the drums, and a frog to play the zurna, among others. At the end the rabbit is pursued by hunting dogs!
The dominant instrument in this song is the bagpipe (gaida).
The original Macedonian lyrics with English translation can be found here:
The next Arap is from Bulgaria. It's called Kulskoto and done to different music. Near the end you can hear the zurna. What makes the zurna so distinctive is its loud, piercing sound, even louder than the bagpipe.
My group dances this version to the music for Zaiko Kokorajko (except for the turns). I guess different villages do different variations. It's all good.
The next Arap is also from Bulgaria and very similar to the previous version. They don't do the turns and they swing the arms, but the footwork is the same. The music is also different, with bagpipe accompaniment. It's very pleasing to watch and the costumes are beautiful.
The song is Neveno, Mome, Neveno which I like very much. Does anyone out there have the lyrics and/or translation for it?
All tragedies are finished by a death, all comedies by a marriage.
Lord Byron
Today's post features wedding dances and bloopers from Romania and Bulgaria. You will get your daily dose of Vitamin C (for comedy) here, and lots of dancing, some of it performed by people in elaborate embroidered costumes.
The first video is Svatbarsko Horo (Wedding Dance). Where are the wedding guests? I see a group of people in folk dress, and a guy singing. (Maybe the people in the park are the wedding crashers. No, it's that bird hopping around on the walkway in front of the bridal party!)
And Google, please lay off the ads, it's annoying to close out of them while I'm watching YouTube. You have to find a way to bring in the cash without driving people nuts.
The next video is a group of five Romanian wedding bloopers. A little too much booze combined with the inclination to show off while dancing is a recipe for laughter, and sometimes, disaster. This is the kind of stuff that people talk about for years afterwards. They don't remember the church ceremony, or the beautiful couple; they remember the relatives who drank too much and made total fools of themselves!
What is really cool about weddings in Eastern Europe is how they combine traditional and modern music. The Penguin Dance (no. 3 in this group), seems to be a staple at Romanian weddings. I can listen to it for about a minute, then it starts to get annoying. It's the kind of music that's best tolerated in a drunken stupor. Check out the guy at the back of the line, he can barely stand up!
No. 1 shows a bride with black nails and missing teeth. Did the groom escape at the last minute? I sure hope so :)
The fine art of folk dancing is taken to new heights when done with cake and pastries. The rachenitsa, national dance of Bulgaria, is a form of flirtation. It is made more challenging when there are poles in the way and cake in the hand. Amazingly, there is no damage to the cake, and the men do some amazing deep knee bends. I wonder if they could dance with wine bottles on top of their heads?
When I first started Balkan folk dancing the dance Vlaško Horo from northern Bulgaria really got my attention. I watched a group of men dancing Vlaško one night and I loved the stamping and the shouting and the energy of it.
I've been practicing it for a while, and still have a little trouble with the fast parts (parts 1 and 2 are easy). At a dance I went to a few weeks ago it was on the program; and I requested that it be taught. I still don't have it 100%. One of these days I'll be able to do it without the video; in the meantime, here's the dance, as I learned it. You can also use a belt hold, it makes Vlaško more challenging and fun.
There are other variations of Vlaško. These young ladies perform Sitno Vlaško Horo in a shopping mall in Bulgaria; it is a totally different dance than the previous one. They use electronic instead of traditional music, which suits the modern setting well.
My fascination with Vlaško doesn't end here; here is yet another version! If you are a regular reader of The Alien Diaries, this video will be totally familiar to you; this group is the Dunav ensemble of Vidin, and yes, that big boat is a distraction. Dunav means Danube in Bulgarian (and several other Slavic languages as well).
In the next video Vlaško travels to Serbia. The Vlachs, a people of Roman origin, traveled far and wide all over the Balkans, primarily because many of them were sheep herders and part of their job was to search for greener pastures. In Serbia, the dance becomes Vlaško Kolo. The word kolo describes a circle or wheel but sometimes kolo is danced in a line. Circles and lines are geometric figures.
The River of Many Names, Part 3 features the Dunav Ensemble of Vidin; there is an excellent video of them in action. You can get exhausted just watching. The scenery is nice, too.
Today's post features the Trakia Percussion Group from Bulgaria. They play classical music and Bulgarian folk dances on a Central American folk instrument, the marimba.
For some reason Bulgarians are fascinated by music from Latin America. One of the Bulgarian National Radio affiliates has a program titled Planeta Latino, and I have heard songs in the Puerto Rican style on this radio station (in Bulgarian)! Here's the link to program (if you're Cyrillically challenged, you may want to use Google Translate). http://radiovidin.bnr.bg/Shows/Music/planeta-latino/Pages/default.aspx
The marimba is the national instrument of Guatemala, and is also popular in southern Mexico, as well as in other Central American countries. Musicians and composers have been incorporating it into classical music as well because of its unique sound quality. It is a percussion instrument, like a xylophone, with resonators on the bottom. The traditional instruments from Guatemala and Mexico used gourds as resonators, and they were made from wood. The modern ones are made from metal and synthetic materials.
I grew up with Guatemalan folk music because my mom's best friend was from that country. I got to like it because they played it so much, and they had stacks of recordings featuring the marimba. When I first heard Bulgarian folk music played on marimba, I found it rather strange at first, but then I found I rather liked this cross-cultural mix.
Earlier this year I had written a post featuring Petko Stainov's Rachenitsa, of which one of the variations was played on a marimba. (You will see a link to it at the end of this post.) A member of the Trakia Percussion Group, Miroslav Dimov, saw a comment I had posted on YouTube and sent me the link to some of his videos.
The first video is a medley of Bulgarian folk dances played on marimba: a lesnoto, a pravo and a kopanitsa. The lesnoto is a dance in irregular rhythm (7/8 time signature); the pravo is in 6/8; the kopanitsa in 11/16. They blend almost seamlessly into each other.
The second is a dance titled Gornodikansko Horo, which to me sounds like a fast pravo. By the way, the group won a first prize in an international competition with this piece, and it's a delight to listen to. If you take a closer look you can see the musicians are wearing traditional Bulgarian embroidered shirts.
If you enjoyed this you may also like: Variations on a Theme by Petko Stainov (Rachenitsa Travels to Guatemala)
Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect, as well as for the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper. ― Albert Einstein
In our little folk world, everyone seems to know everyone else. Most of us know each other by sight, if not by name, we are constantly meeting at dances and workshops. We know the names of the workshop leaders as well as their specialties.
One name well known in folk dance circles in North America and Europe is Yves Moreau. A French Canadian from Montreal, he got into folk dancing in the most unusual way; as a member of a boy scout troop. You can read a short bio of him here:
For Moreau, folklore became a destiny. He was especially bewitched by the music of Bulgaria. The Bulgarian government invited him to visit the country when he was still a college student.
During the Communist days of the 1960's and '70's Moreau did field work in Bulgaria with a tape recorder and a microphone. He visited villages all over the country (some of them quite remote, the government had discouraged him from going to some of these places, but he went anyway). His recordings featured folk songs and musicians from different regions. This collection became a series of CD's titled "Beyond the Mystery." It is Bulgarian folklore in its purest form; music unsullied by commercialism, simple and beautiful; much of what would have been lost without these recordings.
You can check out some samples, and order CD's and DVD's here:
Oftentimes he was in the middle of a wedding or a celebration when he captured musicians for posterity on his tape recorder; he didn't have the sophisticated equipment that we take for granted nowadays; nowdays people (like myself) record amateur videos on inexpensive digital cameras.
While doing fieldwork in Bulgaria, Moreau also learned the folk dances; he introduced many of them in workshops in North America and Europe.
The first one, from the Pirin region in southwestern Bulgaria (near the Macedonian border) is Bicak, performed by a group from the United States.
This lively dance from northwestern Bulgaria is Kulska Shira. Each set of steps gets progessively more difficult; they build on each other.
One of my favorites (and one that I sometimes lead) is Dospatsko Horo from the Rhodope region of southern Bulgaria. You can see it has travelled a long way; this "Bonding Folkdance Class" is from China.
This dance Varnenska Tropanka, from Dobrudja (northeastern Bulgaria) is extremely popular. Just about every group does it.
If you want to see Yves Moreau in action, check out this video of him teaching and leading Žensko Kapansko Horo during a workshop in Toronto, Canada. Although this is technically a women's dance The Alien Diaries is an Equal Opportunity Blog, so men are allowed to lead :)
If you didn't get enough Bulgarian folk music here, you can listen to this interview that Yves Moreau gave on KDHX in St. Louis, Missouri, USA, in March of 2012. The music is wonderful, and the interview itself is quite interesting. The broadcast is almost two hours long, make sure you have plenty of time.
If you like folk dances with lots of stamping in the choreography, you have come to the right place.
Today's featured folklore region will be Dobrudja, the northeastern quadrant of Bulgaria. This region encompasses two countries, Romania and Bulgaria. For a map and some info, check out this link from Wikipedia:
The first Bulgarian dance that I learned from that area was a women's dance titled Dobrudžanska Reka. The choreography varies; from what I've noticed on the Universe of You Tube, the Bulgarian version tends to be simpler than the one that make the rounds of folk dance groups in other parts of the world. If you're wondering why the setting is so familiar, the reason is that the dancers are in a shopping mall!
Here is a fancier version performed by an international folk dance group from New Orleans in the United States.
The next video is of a sborenka which is basically a dance with lots of grapevines and lots of stamping. Sborenka is a generic name for a group of dances from Dobrudja; they come in many different "flavors." In Bulgaria dances are often named after cities and towns and sometimes regions.
If you count the steps (remember that many dancers are math and physics people with the exception of yours truly!) you will see a pattern here.
Dances in which you stamp your feet are very good for relieving the frustrations of everyday life. The downside of this is that your feet and knees can hurt after a night doing Dobrudjan folk dances, especially if there were so many candles on your last birthday cake that they fired off the smoke detector. Let this be a warning to those over the age of fifty!
On bad days, the Chinese get their frustrations out in their "Bonding Folkdance Class" as they so aptly describe it. The dance is Tervelska Tropanka. Bonding and stamping are not always communal activities; in this case, they are. And they are having fun doing it.
"Their way of Dancing, is nothing but a sort of stamping Motion, much like the treading upon Founders Bellows."
John Lawson
I don't know what kind of dancing John Lawson was referring to, but he could have been referring to the Vlachs.
The Vlachs also known as Wallachians, had wandering ways and settled all over the Balkans. They were most likely descendents of the Romans, a Latin-speaking ethnic group. The Roman influence lives on in the country of Romania, whose language is based primarily on Latin. The word "Vlach" is a Germanization of "Wallachian", from "Wlaha" which means foreigner or stranger. Wallachia is located in what is now southern Romania (the provinces of Oltenia and Muntenia).
Today's post will feature Vlach dances from Serbia. They are very lively and have lots of stamping, a good way to get out your frustrations on bad days. And the music will lift your spirits, too.
Speaking of spirits, stamping while dancing was supposed to drive away evil spirits.
The first group, Dunav, from Calgary in the province of Alberta, Canada performs a medley of Vlach dances.
Gaida (bagpipe) music is popular in Serbia, although they prefer the accordion. Instruments of torture seem to vary by country. The Macedonians and Bulgarians like the gaida, the Romanians the panpipe, and the Greeks the bouzouki.
This video looks like an promotion for a piper named Bulgjigič Tomaslav. He has dancers and musicians here as a backup to make sure you know his music is good. (By the way you can't dance if the music is no good!) If you want to call him, let's say to play for your next party, his phone number is on the video, although if you lived far away, let's say, in North America, it would get rather expensive to pay for him and his group to travel across the Pond :)
His speciality is Vlach melodies and circle dances (the plural of kolo is kola). The backdrop is the Iron Gate gorge, along the Danube, River of Many Names. Here we go with that Dunav thing again....
Now it's time for another Dunav group, this time from Israel. The dance is Vlaško Serbsko.
If you enjoyed this you may also like:
The River of Many Names Part 3: Folk Ensembles Named Dunav
If you love Balkan music and dance you have come to the right place! The Alien Diaries began in February 2010 and is updated at least twice a month.
This blog is dedicated to the memory of my cat Fatso (see avatar), who passed away on April 9, 2011 from congestive heart failure. He was the inspiration for several of my early posts.
Don't forget to check out my second blog, Light and Shadow, for some humor, satire, photos and poetry!
