Kocani Orkestar ready to swing Famagusta with Balkan music

Their trademark thundering style and the funkiness of their beats, combined with the lovely, passionate soloists, would lead any audience to break into dance. Moreover, the band’s romantic and epic love songs take Balkan pop music to unexplored new horizons.

Trotting the globe with a repertoire based on gypsy tunes from across the Balkans, the band is now headed for the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (KKTC), where they are set to perform a live set on Monday evening as part of this year’s Gazimağusa (Famagusta) International Culture and Art Festival.

Ahead of their concert tomorrow night at the ancient theater of Salamis, Ajnur Azizov, the lead singer of the Kocani Orkestar, speaks about their music and their upcoming projects in an interview with Sunday’s Zaman:

Oriental brass bands are generally a gypsy specialty throughout the Balkan region, from Serbia to Macedonia. How do you describe your own music?

We are trying to present audiences with both gypsy and Balkan music. Our most recent album [“The Ravished Bride” (2008)] aims to deliver traditional Macedonian music to listeners all around the world. They categorize our music as world music, and that’s fine.

You made your first international breakthrough with your album “L’Orient est Rouge” in 1998. What was so magical about this album that led the band to this much success?

Balkan music became more popular at the end of the ’90s. We just came up with the right album at the right time. It was an energetic album and it was a big success for Kocani internationally.

Kocani Orkestar hails from the town of Kocani in Macedonia. Are you all from the same town?

When it was founded, the members were all from Kocani, but now, although almost every member is from Kocani, there are some musicians from nearby villages not more than 20 kilometers away, so you can still call it a “town orchestra.”

Your music is based on gypsy tunes from various parts of the Balkans, with some Turkish and Bulgarian rhythms. How much do you know about Turkish music and Turkish singers?

We all know so many Turkish singers and we listen to Turkish music a lot. We both listen to classical Turkish music and Turkish pop. Everyone in the orchestra knows every song by [arabesque singer-songwriter] Orhan Gencebay, [pop singer] Tarkan and [folk and arabesque singer] İbrahim Tatlıses. Whenever we perform live on stage, we perform our own music, but we like to play some Turkish music when we are just playing for fun, and we love it. We particularly love to sing the song “Akdeniz Akşamları” [“Mediterranean Nights,” originally sung by Turkish singer Haluk Levent]. And all the members of Kocani Orkestar love the song “Seni Seviyorum” [“I Love You”] by [arabesque singer] Kibariye.

The sound of oriental brass bands was introduced to a large part of the world by Emir Kusturica’s film “Underground.” Can you recommend any other movies featuring great Balkan music?

I recommend the movie “Borat,” which features a song from Kocani Orkestar. It’s not a Balkan movie, though, but it’s a very famous movie – and it has our music on the soundtrack. As members of Kocani we all love Balkan music, so any movie with some Balkan music in its soundtrack is attractive for us in some way. No matter who the musician is, we love to hear our traditional songs in any movie.

Will any of your music be appearing in any films in the future?

In fact our manager comes up with new projects. We are not after projects, though, we are more into coming up with new music. We write some new material, we record some new material, but our manager always has new ideas – there may be some surprises with some new pictures, why not?

Your 2008 album “The Ravished Bride” contains songs of a variety of styles. Do you intend to experiment with some new styles soon?

Actually, our song “La Lorona” is very different to Balkan music -- it has a Mexican flavor and feel. But our next album is going to be pure Balkan music; we are working on traditional Macedonian music.

What will you perform at the northern Cyprus concert?

After a marathon of concert dates, we are going to be in the studio for a while working on our next album, for which we have already recorded some new material. Our live performance in northern Cyprus on Monday is going to be full of our best music -- but also some new material to be played live onstage for the first time.