In April and May 2019 I went for a short field work to Morocco and recorded a few Gnawa jam sessions with local musicians hanging out at Dar Gnawa in Tangier. This is the finishing part of my live audiovideo performance, with the footage and music mostly from the Morocco trip.

It was presented at:

RADART #10: X/L Experiment: Radio Factory – 10th performative art-radio happening of Open research platform RADAR of Radio Student. Celebrating the 50th anniversary of Radio Student that started broadcasting on 9th of May, 1969, and where I spent almost a decade. Radio Student – my first music academy..

Rehearsals for the annual Kalinga festival at the Kalinga academy hall in Lubuagan. Kalinga is one of the indigenous people in the mountainous area of northern Luzon, Philippines.

And here my first movie on a Macedonian bagpiper, this one living on Slovenia. It entered an official selection at the Ethnographic film festival Kratovo, Macedonia. On a roadtrip to the festival I found another bagpiper living in his native environment and together these two movies tell a bigger story.

Please check out my new video!

In a remote village in Macedonia lives a bagpiper who is still keeping the tradition alive. His spirit is high, although his music is rarely heard these days. He speaks about how it used to be and plays a couple of old local songs.

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Filmed in China, mostly minorities of Yunnan and their music, with additional improvisation on guqin and Kazakh songs recorded in Shanghai. It is a part of experimental work of exploring traditional musics of the world and trying to bring it to the general audiences in the authentic form, with very little electronic manipulation and making a documentary without the traditional story and commentaries.

As my roommate in the dorm was a student of the guqin I was lucky to learn from him many details about this music, the style, the performance practice and philosophy behind it. This is the instrument of the literati, one of the most potent and influential elite social groups throughout Chinese history. The art of Qin music is one of the four pillars of Chinese culture: philosophy, calligraphy, poetry and Qin music. The musician, Lu Xiaozi, a student of master Dai Xiaolian, recently finished her masters studies and won a first prize in the Chinese Guqin competition. The instrument is from the Tang dinasty and is around 800 years old.

The ending of my one year exchange in China was approaching very fast when I saw a big poster announcing a concert of minority music held at the Conservatory and I decided I should not miss it. The Kazakh group of musicians just blew me away with their performance of their traditional wedding song Kermau Ayday, which is on the CD. Here is a photo taken after the concert with their colorfull costumes and I just had to ask them if they would be willing to record some songs with me in the studio. This was one of the most wonderful days in my life and the musicians, their openness, was amazing. I decided then that my next visit will be to the northwestern province of Xinjiang which is their original home. The video accompanying the song was shot on my last night in Shanghai. I rented a taxi with a friend and we drove around Shanghai in the middle of the night taking in the atmosphere of the city. Next day it was time to go.