About the author:
Richard March is the Folk and Community Arts Specialist at the Wisconsin Arts Board.
He is of Croatian-American heritage and has a Ph.D. in Folklore from Indiana
University.  His doctoral dissertation is entitled "The Tamburitza
Tradition."  In his career he has had the opportunity to help organize
multi-ethnic arts festivals and international cultural exchanges.  His radio
program "Down Home Dairyland" featured traditional and ethnic music of the
Midwest and was on Wisconsin Public Radio from 1986--2000.  He has worked on
public television specials such as "Frankie Yankovic: America's Polka King,"
"Polka Passion" and more.  His two CD collections, "Deep Polka" and "Deeper
Polka" on Smithsonian Folkways Records include tambura selections from Vatra
and Jerry Grcevich.  

Richard March, MY LITTLE GLOBAL VILLAGE (SELO MOJE MALO):
CONTEMPORARY TAMBURA MUSIC-MAKING IN THE UNITED STATES
From NARODNA UMJETNOST, Hrvatski casopis za etnologiju i folkloristiku 40/2, Zagreb, 2003
From Croatian Journal of Ethnology and Folklore Research

At the beginning of September, 2003 five young musicians from the Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Cleveland areas, members of a recently-formed tamburitza combo with the potent-sounding name “Otrov” (“poison” in English) jetted to Croatia to participate in Zlatne Zice Slavonije 2003, a festival of tamburitza music in Slavonska Pozega. Although “Otrov” had only been in existence for a few months, the musicians have known each other and most members had played together in various other aggregations during the past several years.

The message board on the Tamburaland.com website filled up with good wishes to the band which consists of five American-born tamburashi in their twenties plus their band-mate and musical mentor Vjeko Dimter, 34, a Slavonac from Osijek, who has lived in Pennsylvania most of the time since 1989.

The next batch of messages were from tambura musicians and enthusiasts seeking and receiving advice on how to see or hear Otrov's performance in Pozega, on-line or via satellite TV. There followed appreciative comments about their playing of “Selo moje malo,” an original tune composed by the group's bugarija player Vjeko Dimter. Otrov plays a lot of original material, many by Dimter who also smetimes co-authors songs with Otrov's primas Peter Kosovec, a fourth-generation American-Croatian. On the message board someone sends a link to Otrov's picture as it appeared in the “Scena” section of Vecernji list, a sponsor of the event.

On the Monday evening, one day after the Pozega festival, at a rehearsal of “Granicari” an adult amateur tamburitza orchestra and choir in the Milwaukee area, the director Patsy Jurkovic-Lucas, looking for new repertoire, played three tunes from the Zlatne Zice Slavonija 2003 sampler CD which she downloaded to her home computer that morning. Members of “Granicari” liked the song “Tajna” by a combo called “Estam,” a group they had never heard of before. By the next week, using music notation software on her computer, Patsy had printed out her arrangement of “Tajna” which the group immediately began to rehearse. “Granicari” included the song in their program when they traveled to Pittsburgh in late October, 2003 to perform at TamFest 2003, a gathering of North American adult amateur tamburitza orchestras sponsored by the Croatian Fraternal Union.

A couple of days following the Pozega festival, Vjeko Dimter who is webmaster of Tamburaland checked in, from Philadelphia, saying he was still jet-lagged but would post pictures soon. A couple of days later, dozens of photos taken by Otrov members were put on the website documenting not only their performance and travels but also their jam sessions and bacchanalian visits with friends and relatives in Croatia. Humorous, sarcastic and appreciative comments about the pictures flooded the Tamburaland message board.

The events just described are typical but notable happenings on the contemporary tamburitza scene in the USA and Canada. Such doings, of course, would have been impossible in 1983 when I wrote my doctoral dissertation “The Tamburitza Tradition,” a general work which sought to portray the history and current status of tamburitza music- making at that time, both in the United States and in the music's original European homeland. (March, 1983) The tamburitza tradition has changed during the past twenty years. Otrov's trip to Pozega in September, 2003 and its musical repercussions constitute a complex act of cultural communication taking place in a contemporary context where technological advances have accelerated the transmission of traditional knowledge and creative expression. This has been ever so. In the introduction to my dissertation I wrote, “Once limited to oral transmission, the [tamburitza] tradition has since entered whatever medium of communication available in its cultural environment.” (March, 1983) Little could I dream that those media might expand so rapidly and that an instantaneous world-wide communications network like the Internet could arise in less than the twenty years since the completion of my doctoral work.

The tamburitza tradition has changed. Everything changes. In addition to the effects of communications and travel technology (home computers, the internet, mobile telephones and relatively inexpensive air travel), there have been effects stemming from the big political changes in tamburitza's lands of origin, Croatia and Vojvodina. (the downfall of Communist political rule in Europe, the establishment of Croatia as an independent state, the break-up of former Yugoslavia and the Homeland War). And these changes in fact may be linked. Some commentators have seen a causal connection between the international communications revolution and the downfall of authoritarian regimes. (Katz, 2000)

There is one thing about the tamburitza tradition in the United States that has not changed: it remains virtually unknown to most Americans who do not happen to be of Croatian or Serbian descent. The Pittsburgh area is something of an exception. There, the Duquesne University Tamburitzans do have a higher public profile. But still today, most Pittsburghers know “Tamburitzans” only as the name of one group, Duquesne University's performing ensemble, not realizing it is also the name of a family of instruments.

Despite occasional performances in auspicious settings such as the Smithsonian Folklife Festival and the National Folk Festival, tamburitza music remains little known to most Americans. While introducing the outstanding Pittsburgh primas Jerry Grcevich performing for the prestigious Folk Masters concert series with Chicago's “Slanina” orchestra, folklorist Nick Spitzer called tamburitza “a great, unknown American traditional music.” (Spitzer, 1992)

Virtually no studies of American tamburitza have appeared since Walter Kolar, the former director of the Duquesne ensemble, wrote A History of the Tambura, vol. 2 in 1975 and my aforementioned dissertation in 1983. A welcome exception is the article “Hrvati i tambura u Sjedinjenim Drzavama” by Stjepan Sremac (Sremac, 2002). Nonetheless, Sremac largely had to rely on information from the earlier publications.

In this article, I will base my comments on my participant-observation of the American tamburitza scene. This has not been an organized process of documented research of which anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski would approve. (Malinowski, 1922) Rather my knowledge has seeped into my consciousness through an on-going life in the tradition, as a supporter, an enthusiast, sometimes a musician and always a friend of many tamburashi. My participation has been concentrated in my home region. Therefore the majority of the examples come from the Milwaukee--Chicago--Northern Indiana area, a geographic zone hooking through industrial cities around the southwestern shores of Lake Michigan. Because of it's shape, in a joking reference to Mesopotamia, one player called it the Fertile Crescent of Tambura. (Sharko, 1986) For convenience, I'll use that term from time to time. I will be painting a picture of today's tamburitza scene and contrasting it to that of twenty years ago. However, I can not pretend to produce a history of chronological events during the past twenty years.

In the example of Otrov's trip to Pozega several characteristics of today's scene are evident. First of all, twenty years ago it would have been surprising for a group that was formed only a few months earlier already to be performing at an important festival. It also would be surprising back then to have a combo with members from three different fairly-distant cities.

This is evidence that during the past twenty years, the personnel of tamburitza combos has become much more fluid. A cadre of thirty or forty of the best musicians, living in various cities in North America are acquainted, are capable of getting together and making excellent music together. This situation is parallel to what has happened in some other ethnic musical traditions in America. Commenting on his Irish-American group “The Green Fields of America,” folklorist/performer Mick Moloney said, “There's kind of a network of about maybe 20 musicians around, and then people come over from Ireland, like Tommy Sands, to join us now and again. At a moment's notice, a group can evolve.” (Winick, 1993)

An example of how this can happen in the tambura world occurred at the Midwest Folklife Festival in Waterloo, Iowa in June, 2001. Almost a year in advance, the festival's organizers had booked Vatra, a Croatian tamburitza combo from Milwaukee. In the meantime, the combo had started to fall apart. A marriage, job changes and relocations had altered the lives of the young men who made up the group and they had stopped playing actively a few months earlier. Wanting to honor the contract to play this important job, the Vatra Milwaukeeans called upon three members of the hyper-talented Kosovec family from Detroit to join them: multi-instrument player Peter, his cousin berde-player David and Peter's sister Sonja, a vocalist. They flew into Waterloo a few hours before the performance, rehearsed together for less than two hours in their hotel rooms and played an outstanding program on the festival's main stage. Their music was polished, well received by the audience and especially appreciated by a large number of Bosnians, mostly from Velika Kladusa who now live in Waterloo.

Things were different at the beginning of the 1980s. Then, most tamburitza combos in the US and Canada were comprised of musicians who lived in the same city. The membership in these bands changed slowly, as did the core repertoire expected by their fans. Often such bands had a regular engagement at a certain tavern or hall. For example in South Chicago you could hear the Star Serenaders every week at the Golden Shell restaurant. A short drive away there was The Rafters, a tavern that always featured local tamburitza combos like the Kapudji Brothers, Dunav or the Popovich Brothers. In Milwaukee, Jack Yelich played regularly at the Saratoga, a bar on South 16 th Street. Similar tamburitza bars existed in many North American Croatian and Serbian communities.

In recent years, fewer taverns and restaurants offer any sort of live music. Moreover, because most seek to attract a broad clientele, fewer still would want to offer an esoteric form of ethnic folk music. Furthermore, restaurant owners face another disincentive to hiring live musicians: the substantial payment sought by representatives of the ASCAP and BMI music publishing organizations. These organizations have become increasingly aggressive in seeking payments for the live performance of material copyrighted through them. (Wierichs, 1999)

Now there are virtually no tambura bars in the Fertile Crescent. Bronko's Restaurant in Crown Point, Indiana operated by Montenegrin-American Nick Tarailo perhaps is the only such venue that frequently books tambura combos. A few bars, like the Milwaukee Ale House and The Nomad (also in Milwaukee) that feature an eclectic array of “World Music” performers, occasionally book tamburitza combos.

Because tamburitza enthusiasts can seldom head for a neighborhood tavern or restaurant to hear the music in their local community, there is a greater reliance upon a network community, the Croatian ethnic events, picnics, dinners, dances and festivals, especially those sponsored by lodges of the Croatian Fraternal Union. These events are planned long in advance. The tamburitza music is considered an important component, always featured in their advertisements. For the bigger events, like the CFU Ski Holiday or the National Golf Tournament, band members from different cities may converge, driving or flying in from a considerable distance. The performers' fee plus the generous tips skewered on their tuning pegs by appreciative listeners make it financially worthwhile.

There are now more national events with a tamburitza music theme and people are willing and able to travel to them. Promoting amateur tamburitza activity is a core raison d'etre of the Croatian Fraternal Union. The annual CFU Junior Cultural Federation Festival continues to be the most important gathering of North American youth tamburitza orchestras with approximately 30 such ensembles participating every year. Since the mid-1980s the CFU also has sponsored TamFEST, a gathering of a growing number of adult amateur tamburitza orchestras. This year the adults caught up in terms of the number of groups. Thirty-one adult groups participated in the 2003 event.

Since 1970, the Tamburitza Extravaganza has been a gathering of professional combos sponsored by the Tamburitza Association of America and recently, since 2003 there is a new national event, the Tamburaland Festival, held in Pittsburgh and organized by the younger musicians involved with the tamburaland.com website. The second Tamburaland Festival will be in Pittsburgh again in late May, 2004.

With more mobile musicians and audiences, tamburitza music is being created more and more in a national context. As a result, North American regional stylistic distinctions are diminishing. Telephones have also become mobile and the subscribers often have a national calling plan. This has made it common for musician friends in distant cities to casually hear each other's music. At a recent “Granicari” rehearsal in Milwaukee, a Pittsburgh friend of prim player Nancy Pozgaj called up and listened to a number the Granicari members were practicing. The leader of Chicago's Sloboda Junior Tamburitzans, Joe Kirin, described his phone call from Cincinnati to Philadelphia when he had the honor of being the guest conductor of the “mass performance” of all the youth orchestras at the 2003 Junior Cultural Federation Festival:

“Just as the performance was about to begin, I got on the cell phone to call Vjeko [Dimter] so he could hear the performance. A couple of directors and maybe others saw me and were [thinking] like, ‘Oh my God, he's talking on the cell phone during the performance.' So I became the first director to use a cell phone during a mass performance and a new age has begun.” (Kirin, 2003)

Twenty years ago it was still easy to pick out regional styles in the tamburitza combos of North America. There was a distinct sound from Chicago, Pittsburgh or Youngstown, Ohio. Nowadays, the younger musicians tend to play in a unified style more influenced by Croatian bands like Zlatni Dukati (now called Najbolji Hrvatski Tamburasi), Gazde, Patria or Berde Band, whose recordings have become readily available, than by the older tamburashi in their local communities. As a result, the differences which used to be obvious between an American and a Croatian tamburitza group also are becoming less apparent. To sound like the European bands and therefore more “authentic” has long been a goal of most American tamburashi. The American stylistic “accent” developed as a consequence of their degree of isolation from the wellsprings of the music—in Croatia and Vojvodina.

As the example of Otrov's trip to Pozega shows, there is less isolation and there are increasing cross-Atlantic influences in the tamburitza tradition. Moreover, recently the direction of musical influences is not exclusively from Europe to America. Pittsburgh's Jerry Grcevich has emerged since the 1990s as one of the world's finest tamburitza musicians. Jerry grew up playing with his father Joseph and uncle Marko in their Sloboda tamburitza combo. In 1976 the CFU Junior Federation Festival was held in Zagreb for the first time. Jerry, still a teenager but already an awesome musician, participated. He traveled also to Novi Sad where he met and established a lasting connection with Zvonko Bogdan and Janika Balaz.

Around 1980, Jerry produced two influential LP albums, himself playing all five types of tamburitza instrument, recorded sound-on-sound. His music was imbued with a profound influence from the Romani style of Janika Balaz and the Bunjevac style of Zvonko Bogdan. There was an unprecedented emphasis on instrumental virtuosity in all sections of the partitura. Younger American tamburashi were stunned. Writing for Tamburaland in 2002, Chicago's noted brac player Joe Kirin, the director of the Sloboda Junior Tamburitzans, a former member of Sinovi and Slanina, and currently the leader of Tamburitza Rroma, commented, “I…became hooked on Jerry and his playing. When his second album came out, I listened to it correctly and was again amazed. I tried to learn much of the material and had difficulty with it. His music caused a major shift in the style and technique of the music I was performing.” (Kirin, 2002)

Jerry proved to be a conduit for the influence of the Roma players, especially the Janika Balaz Orchestra. Like Jerry and Janika, many American tamburashi began to retune their instruments a whole-step higher and to use larger, rectangular bone picks. The preference of Janika's group for high quality instruments made by the Sombor luthier Lajos Bocan spread also to American players. The emphasis on technical virtuosity required finely-crafted instruments. Today, in addition to the Bocan instruments, skilled players obtain tambure from Lado Krklec in New York City or Marinko Katulic in Turopolje.

Zvonko Bogdan and another important singer, Miro Skoro had extended sojourns in the United States during the 1980s. Both wound up in musical collaboration with Jerry making recordings with him. In a 1998 interview, Bogdan placed Jerry alongside Pero Tumbas, Macika Petrovic, Maksa Popov and Janika Balaz in the ranks of the five greatest primasi of all time. (Spiranovic, 1998) Shortly before the outbreak of the Homeland War, Miro Skoro and Jerry co-authored and recorded “Ne dirajte mi ravnicu,” a song that became immensely popular in war-torn Croatia. The song's lyrics that proclaimed “ja cu se vratiti” (I will return), was a sentiment that gave voice to the yearnings for home of refugees and displaced persons.

Because of his high musical standards and his practice of playing all the parts on his recordings, it was rumored that Jerry was too much of a musical perfectionist ever to have a live band. But Jerry defied those predictions, forming the Jerry Grcevich Tambura Orchestra in 1993.

During each of the past few years, Jerry has spent several months living and making music in Croatia, recording with some of the finest Croatian tamburasi. His example has led the way for other American groups to travel to Croatia, seeking opportunities to play on an equal footing with their Croatian peers. For example, in 2002 and again in 2003 the Chicago group “Boduli,” who perform bluesy, rock-influenced numbers along with more traditional tambura repertoire, traveled to the “Brodfest” tamburitza music festival in Slavonski Brod.

Joe Kirin's comments provide the ultimate confirmation of Jerry Grcevich's stature in the world of tamburitza music: “Jerry is the best tambura player that I know, period. There has been Janika (Balaz), Hrvoje (Majic), Tuce (Antun Nikolic) and many others that we could argue who is better. None of them could play every position/tambura like Jerry.” (Kirin, 2002)

As they grow in their music, tamburashi seek out and learn new repertoire. The professional combos have adopted the “hit tune” model to attract attention. Even many amateurs are not content just to play and re-play the old standards. In the past the American tamburashi always had to scrounge for new songs. “To get new repertoire, we used to have to wait for somebody to come back from a vacation in Europe with a suitcase full of 45s from the Jugoton store,” commented Michael Jurkovic, a noted bugarija player from Milwaukee. They needed to hear those records. Very little composing of new tamburitza repertoire was occurring in America. By the 1960s, most of the tamburashi were American-born. They had limited Croatian or Serbian language skills. Practically no American tamburashi could compose songs in those languages. But the tamburashi did not follow the path taken by, for example, Polish-American polka bands, adding many English language songs to their repertoire. Except for an occasional American pop tune to sing at weddings, American tamburitza combos continue to shun singing in English.

Before the independence of Croatia, relatively few tamburitza recordings were produced in the SFRJ so American tamburashi, often learned the songs of the so-called “Narodni Orkestri” which emphasized the accordion played in an Eastern-oriented style. Many Serbian and Bosnian “narodnjak” songs like Meho Puzic's “O majko, majko,” Tozovac's “Jeremija,” Predrag Gojkovic's “Kafu mi draga ispeci,” became common in the repertoire of American tamburashi, regardless of whether the tamburashi were of Croatian or Serbian heritage.

After the outbreak of the Homeland War, inter-ethnic tensions between Croatian- and Serbian-Americans increased and some very vocal elements of audiences, both Serbian and Croatian, denounced the ethnically-mixed repertoire. The Homeland War accelerated the process that was already going on in Serbian-American communities to de-emphasize the tamburitza in favor of the “narodni orkestri.”

In contrast, Croatian-American tamburitza was reinvigorated. The new political conditions in Croatia favored more tamburitza recordings. The appearance of Zlatni Dukati's “Hrvatska Pjesmarica” album of previously-suppressed patriotic songs was very influential. Old, nearly-forgotten songs like “Glasno jasno” and newer patriotic compositions like “Slavonac sam” became current.

The CFU continued a practice begun in the late 1970s of sponsoring tours of the USA and Canada by groups from the homeland. Old well-known chestnuts from Kico Slabinac and Vera Svoboda were appreciated, but young American tamburashi became excited by new tunes from younger bands like Ex Panonia, Berde Band and Patria.

New repertoire from Europe became much easier to access, ultimately leading to today's quick Internet posting and down-loading of mp3's. But having an artist like Vjeko Dimter, a talented and prolific composer of new material for tambura living and performing in the United States was something new. Vjeko was born in Osijek in 1969. his father Edgar Dimter was a trumpet player in local dance bands. Vjeko began to play tambura and guitar at the age of ten and later became a member of the “Milica Krizan” amateur tamburitza ensemble.

In 1989 Vjeko went with “Milica Krizan” on a performance tour of the United States. He had the opportunity to audition for the Duquesne University Tamburitzans and was awarded a scholarship. From 1989-1993 Vjeko studied psychology and jazz guitar, and performed all over America with the Tamburitzans ensemble. During his college years he began to compose both tamburitza and popular music. He played in American pop and tamburitza combos, including the Jerry Grcevich Tambura Orchestra.

In 1995 and 1996 Vjeko relocated to Zagreb where he collaborated with the well-known tamburitza groups Sarmeri and Gazde, composing some of their most successful hits—for example, Sarmeri's “Znam da me ne volis” and Gazde's “U snu i ljubavi.” Since late in 1996 Vjeko has lived in Philadelphia, working a “day job” as a computer specialist for a financial firm while also successfully pursuing his artistic efforts. He put his computer skills to artistic use, launching the www.tamburaland.com website late in 2001. Tamburaland connects tamburitza musicians and enthusiasts from around the world. The year 2002 brought many successes. Collaborating with Croatian pop star Oliver Dragojevic, Vjeko composed “Sve bi dao za nju,” a song which won the Croatian recording industry's Porin award for song of the year 2002. (The award is Croatia's equivalent to the USA's Grammy.) (Dimter, 2003) Also in 2002 Vjeko produced “Kuda idu godine,” a CD featuring mostly his own compositions that has astonished the American tamburitza scene. On the CD he collaborated with Peter Kosovec, an outstanding young American tambura player.

Along with players like Ryan Werner of Milwaukee and Robi Sestili of Pittsburgh, Peter is one of an amazing crop of young American primasi that have emerged in the past few years. The Kosovec family of Detroit has had a long-time influence upon the American tamburitza scene. Peter's grandfather Ludwig was a leader of the Detroit Tamburitza Symphony. His father Kenneth has been a member of noted the combos, “Lira,” and “Momci” with his brother Dennis. Ken was also the instructor for the youth group Detroit Star Tamburitzans. His mother Bonnie is an excellent vocalist. Peter was born in 1980 and he got an early start in music. He recalls the moment at age five when his father put an instrument in his hand: “I remember the exact time he gave me the tambura in my living room. It's the same one I use today.” (Mikolajek, 2001)

After a few years in the Detroit junior group, his talent was obvious. He recorded his first CD in his basement studio at the age of 13 sharing vocal tasks with his mother and his sister Sonja. He and Sonja as well as his cousin David became members of the Duquesne University ensemble.

Because of his precocious virtuosity and his self-produced sound-on-sound recordings, Peter is like the next generation's Jerry Grcevich, however there also are significant differences. Jerry developed his amazing talents in a greater degree of isolation. Before the 1990s, he seemed to be something of a reclusive genius. Through the 1980s, tamburitza enthusiasts awaited for Jerry's inspiring self-produced recordings to emerge from his home studio. As a Duquesne Tamburitzan, Peter's musical skills were showcased in live shows far and wide. After graduation he has remained in Pittsburgh, forming the Otrov combo whose adventures in September, 2003 started this article, bringing us full circle.

Today the American tamburitza tradition is healthy and shows no signs of decline. Young people continue to learn to play the tambura in more than thirty youth groups, mostly associated with the CFU Junior Cultural Federation. And youthful professional combos are making their mark. At the 2003 Tamburitza Extravaganza in Chicago, the teenaged members of the youngest participating professional combo, “Mladi Fakini” from Milwaukee, were greeted with much enthusiasm.

Tambura remains closely associated with the institutions of the Croatian ethnic community in America, even when, through inter-marriage, many of the children learning to play today have fewer Croatian ancestors. The younger generation takes for granted the availability of the Internet, cell phones and easier travel which are making the tamburitza tradition a more unified, global musical scene.

Literature
Katz, Jonathon. 1997. "Birth of a Digital Nation". Wired Magazine 5, 4 (April).
Internet edition: http://www.wired.com/5.04/netizen.html (3. 10. 2003.)

Kirin, Joseph. 2002 "Reflections by Joe Kirin". Internet page Tamburaland
http://www.tamburaland.com/column/column.html

Kolar, Walter, 1973. A History of the Tambura. Vol. 1 Pittsburgh: DUTIFA

Kolar, Walter, 1975. A History of the Tambura. Vol. 2 Pittsburgh: DUTIFA

Malinowski, Bronislaw. 1922 Argonauts of the Western Pacific. New York: Dutton

March, Richard. 1983. The Tamburitza Tradition. Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana University

Mikolajek, Lisa V. 2001. "Tamburitzan Musician Plays and Sings His Way to International Acclaim". The Duquesne University Times 5. 11. 2001.

Spiranovic, Mladen. 1998. "Neformalni lezerni razgovor…" Internet page http://members.eunet.at/spiranovic/Bogdan-iview10.html

Sremac, Stjepan. 2002. "Hrvati I tambura u Sjedinjenim Americkim Drzavama". Etnoloska tribina 25/32:57-74.

Winick, Steve. 1993. "From Limerick Rake to Solid Man: the Musical Life of Mick Moloney". Dirty Linen 48 (October/November)