Romania has a
superb classical radio station – Radio Muzical – with a hall for live
performances which are/were broadcast simultaneously. The station has been
keeping my spirits up these past 5 weeks - but yesterday I felt it was time to take
a trip along memory lane by dipping into the hundreds of CDs I have amassed during
my travels around central Europe and Central Asia over the past 30 years.
I
have vivid memories of the variety of musical bazaars I would come
across and of exciting new finds – particularly of the more popular sort which
(apart from Queen) had never appealed.
Bonnie Tyler
made a lot of guest appearances in central Europe in those days and Willie
Nelson, Rod Stewart and Michael Bolton’s voices would accompany me on the car
radio as I drove to and from the 2 bases I had in the early 90s for a couple of years in Eastern Hungary and indeed into Satu Mare, Romania.
Later,
in Uzbekistan, Santana and Russian pop (such as Alla Pukacheva – and a Yulia
with a guitar) became favourites
So my faithful
Philips CD radio which I had in Sofia for a decade has been
pressed back into service for this purpose. There it was classical music I bought - at amazing prices, a fifth of what I would pay in the UK, allowing me the luxury of buying simply to taste......
And thus I came
across the amazing voice of Lisa Gerrard on a CD called Immortal Memory with Pat
Cassidy. Her full repertoire can be sensed here
It turns out
that she was part of the Dead can Dance group which I
remember coming across in the late 90s on my travels….probably in Central Asia. What I hadn’t
appreciated was her link to the famous Bulgarian voices – which you
can see and hear also here
If that arouses
your interest then watch this recent performance from Lisbon and this
youtube version of the CD I first heard in the early 2000s - The Serpent’s Egg
Jan Garbarek, Pat Metheny
and Ben Webster were other discoveries from those days – until then I knew only
Dave Brubeck and Paul Desmond.
But it was the
ouds which fascinated me – Anouar
Brahem is a great favourite, particularly Le Pas du Chat Noir. But
all his CDs are in the mountain house – here is a longer presentation and
an excerpt from a performance he did in Bucharest in 2012
In Azerbaijan I
picked up some Rabih
Abou-Khalil - here he is doing a fado in Lisbon
