Bosnian Breakdown: The Unpronounceable Beat of Sarajevo (Yugoslavia)

Description

From a Muslim village in Bosnia comes a pop-folk hybrid that is really quite remarkable. It's the folk process at it weirdest and finest as the older fiddle and sargija (a lute similar to a Turkish saz) style slams headlong into the accordion, electric guitar, bass, and drums of an almost punk-rock ethic not dissimilar to the popular "wedding music" style of Bulgaria made famous by Ivo Papasov and Yuri Yunakov. Some songs hang in the acoustic mode with just the old instruments and voices, but most take the electric party approach and all are both strangely remote and traditional and yet revved up for a good time at the local dance hall or party. This is village music from a living, breathing village, not a look to a pastoral past that probably never existed anyway. Play it loud. --Louis Gibson