New Macedonian CD's Slightly off topic

[morovich]

Even though this is a bit off topic, I wanted to let you all know about 3 new CD's released by my friend Dragi Spasovski. Dargi and I have worked together on a number of projects and he is an wonderful singer. His Mother, Rajna Spasovska recorded for Radio Skopje.

Below is a email I got from David Belides, producer of Dragi's new CD's. I highly reccomend them
JM

am very happy to announce the release of 3 new CDs by Radio Skopje vocal artist Dragi Spasovski on the Izvor Music label. Each of the 3 CDs—Voice of My Soul (Glasot Na Mojata Duša), Echo of My Soul (Ekoto Na Mojata Duša), and Beyond the Mountain (Zad Planinata)—are beautifully packaged and contain 70 minutes of Macedonian folk songs. Accompanying Dragi are the Goran Alački Orchestra, the Stefče Stojkovski Ensemble, and David Bilides. Instrumentation includes modern and izvoren instruments. There are also selections on the 3rd CD featuring Dragi's new vocals to accompany his mother's original recordings.


In addition to the CDs, a companion book, Macedonian Folk Songs from the Repertoire of Dragi Spasovski Volume 1, will be available in December, either as a separate purchase, or as part of a discounted bundle with all 3 CDs. Written by David Bilides, Dragi Spasovski, and Rachel MacFarlane, it contains lyrics, transliterations, and translations to all 54 songs on the 3 CDs. There are also notated transcriptions to all the vocals (with ornaments), transcriptions to all the accordion and tambura interludes (including chords for the former and tablature for the latter as well as ornaments for both), notes on the songs, and a glossary.


Finally, beginning in December, you can listen to episodes from our Macedonian Postcards podcasts, which feature lively interviews with Dragi as he provides additional background, discussion, music, and anecdotes about the CD project and each one of its songs.


More information about all 3 components of this project, plus details on order options are available at:


<http://www.izvormusic.com (http://www.izvormusic.com/)>

[George Medakovich]

Thanks!
Can you recommend any other sites that are good resources for
keeping up with SE European music & culture?

[morovich]

If you are interested in general S.E. European topics, you might want to check out www.eefc.org. They have a news and discussion list that deals with a lot of interesting topics. You can surf around the posts or you can subscribe if you want to post things. I recommend that you subscribe to the digest version so that you only get one daily email instead of 30 to 50 emails.

[George Medakovich]

Thanks! I'm familiar with them and will look there.
Any others?

[LENUSZ]

I'll second what John said about eefc, and suggest you check your local area for notification of Balkan/CFU/JUNIOR TAMMIES/Bulgarian-Macedonian-Bosnian-Serbian-Turkish-Greek newsletter type thing. We have that in Seattle, plus a Bulgarian one, and a Bosnian one as well, also, if you follow the bands, they have sign-up sheets for your e-mail address so they can let you know about their next gigs. Also, if you go to any of the Balkan dances that have a regular weekly night of dancing, some of the teachers that live in the local area come to dance also. We have a woman who lived in Athens for 14 years and is a well-known Greek dance teacher, both nationally and internationally, so we know when Greek thingies are happening. Also, if you have restaurants that have music regularly, like we have a Greek restaurant that has music every Friday and Saturday, not only Greek but Balkan as well, you can go to those, they usually have web sites which have their schedules. But like they say, "it's better to be lucky than good", so it all depends where you live.

[George Medakovich]

Thanks, Lenusz. I heard that there were some folks doing Balkan dancing in the OKC
vicinity (probably at OU in Norman), but haven't found a contact yet.
There is a well-established Lebanese community here of long standing,
Greeks and Czech's, but I haven't seen too much local music associated with these communities. But I also haven't looked real carefully, either.

Otherwise I was just interested in some more general coverage Eastern European
resources.

BTW, I saw your comments about polka music in another post. Back in the day
the East Side of Buffalo had a tremendous polka scene. There were bars in the
middle of residential blocks that regularly had bands. Outside of the old Rust Belt
metropolitan areas you just don't find anything like that. There was an NPR story
a couple of months ago about the closing of one of the last local polka resources in the
area: Ruda's Records, although I'll bet the music goes on.

George