Artists

Bratsch

image of Bratsch Gypsy music collides with free Jazz

With subtle irony Bratsch describe their music as “pre-traditional”. Because they believe the music they are playing today will one day be regarded by musicologists as a type of traditional music. Their program could be also defined as contemporary European acoustic music (or folk, in other words). Bratsch are explorers and craftsmen, their playing is technically brilliant and charged with emotion. They are a collective, at the centre of which the aesthetics, sensitivity and self-expression of each individual blossom into a harmonious unit when they play together.

The Bratsch adventure began in the 1970's when Dan Gharibian met Bruno Girard and together they formed a band, playing every musical style from South American to Arabic. In the mid-seventies, the group concentrated on Central European music and discovered the Jewish American crooner and radio star Theodore Bikel, who sang in various Eastern European languages as well as in English, and who combined many different musical styles in his records. This blend of cultures, in particular of musical cultures, is characteristic of Central Europe and especially for the part the Gypsies have played in this development. The Gypsies have always dipped into the wealth of all the musical cultures they have encountered and integrated these influences within their own compositions. An attitude with which the band identifies. Bratsch will not tolerate any rigidity or dogma in their music. Even when their pieces are selected with exactitude, Bratsch are nevertheless free and flexible in their arrangements and performance of the works, moulding them into their own unique and inimitable style. Rather than producing faithful reproductions, they prefer to create pieces charged with the very real and raw emotion typical for Balkan music.