Swinging Macedonia was recorded in Germany with american sidemen, including Mal Waldron on piano, but the focus here is on Dusko's own compositions that attempt to fuse the sensibility of Balkan music with jazz. Several elements are at play here: most obvious are, of course, the skewed rhythms of 5/4 and 9/4 that are native to the dances of southeastern Europe - Romanian, Macedonian, and gypsy music.Macedonia and The Nights of Skopje are written in 5/4. Secondly, it's the modal harmonic elements: Saga Se Karame (later recorded as Slavic Mood) is built on Phrygian; Balkan Blue and Macedonia are modal tunes. Finally, there are structural elements; very few of the tunes utilize the AABA form so ubiquitous in jazz. American jazz was already experimenting with many of these features - odd meters of Take Five and Don Ellis recordings, modal music etc., but here they are very naturally fused into a single unity, the first recording of what later became known "Balkan jazz".
tracks
01. Macedonia (7:28)
02. Old Fishermans Daughter (5:06)
03. Jumbo Uganda (3:52)
04. The Gypsy (4:15)
05. Macedonian Fertility Dance (2:21)
06. Bem-Basha (4:33)
07. Saga Se Karame (4:19)
08. Wedding March of Alexander the Macedonian (4:06)
09. The Nights of Skopje (5:23)
10. Balcan Blue (4:45)
No comments:
Post a Comment