VI
The Balkans: brass, clarinet, voice
Zurna and tapan, then trumpet and tuba. Čoček on the dance floor. Esma in Skopje, Šaban in Niš, Papazov at a Bulgarian wedding. A professional monopoly centuries old.
01
Reed, drum, brass
In the southern Balkans Roma long held the outdoor ritual pairing of zurla (zurna) and tapan. Brass bands inherited the same calendar: weddings, feast days, funerals. Guča in Serbia is the famous gathering; it is not the origin. The origin is the village job.
Čoček (kyuchek in Bulgaria) is the characteristic genre and solo dance, often in odd meters inherited from Ottoman practice. Tallava grew among Kosovo Roma in the 1990s and spread through Albania — Svanibor Pettan’s fieldwork in 1989–91 caught the instrumental scene just before the wars scattered it. Chalga in Bulgaria is the electric popular descendant, culturally contested like manele.
Carol Silverman’s Romani Routes is the book for this page. The world-music market preferred Balkan brass “Gypsy” spectacle. Local Romani parties often hire synthesizer wedding bands. Brass is real. It is not the whole job. Lozanka Peycheva and Ventsislav Dimov mapped the Bulgarian research; the IEFSEM in Sofia and the British Library’s EAP067 hold the older paper and tape.
02
Voices of the cities
Esma Redžepova made Romani song a Yugoslav and then a world fact. Šaban Bajramović in Niš wrote and sang a popular Romani urban blues. Ivo Papazov’s clarinet turned Bulgarian wedding music into a virtuoso art that still has to start on time for the first dance.
Serbia is already in this archive: Šaban’s family. The Library of Congress filmed a 2019 Homegrown concert of that song-world: Eva Salina, voice, and Peter Stan, accordion. Peter is a Serbian/Romanian Roma player. Eva is an American interpreter of Vida Pavlović and Šaban — not a Romani family. No family page for her.
Ibro Lolov is a named Bulgarian Romani accordionist. ARC issued Gypsy Music from Bulgaria; the 2014 NAXOS audio keeps that album word. Neighbour to Papazov’s clarinet, not a new family until sourced. Selime Bajrami sang Kosovo Roma song on Jugoton in 1969 (Gilava Amare Romenge). That name is listed under Later. Greece is on the country list of this style. A 1996 FM Records compilation, Songs of Greece’s Gypsies, is not a family register.
Kočani Orkestar carried Macedonian Romani brass onto the same festival circuit as Fanfare Ciocărlia. Khamoro in Prague is a living festival-archive of the same map — Radio Free Europe filmed the parade in 2012. The circuit is not the tradition. The tradition is the wedding that still hires the band. Vesna Acković’s Vocal Roma Music in Yugoslavia (1999) is an emic record of the voices, not the brass poster.