88.1 KDHX Saint Louis

This will be music of the Balkan Roma, The professional musicians that shaped Turkish urban music and much of the music of the Balkans

a Tulum is a bagpipe, and, indeed, this piece in slow 9/8 is played against a drone.

This is an extended improvisation on The song "Mastika", known in both Turkey and Greece, celebrating the properties of that alcoholic beverage. Since it was often consumed in Hashish houses, there is stylized coughing added to this performance

modern Greek music

this old recording documents an old urban Roma style in the republic of Macedonia. Women were usually not recorded in those times, so boys were often used for high vocal parts

Ilmi is the father of Ferus, and he was one of the first to adopt the Saxophone in Roma music. The tradition has been continued. Ferus' son has his own band, and there is now even a 6 year old 4th generation grandson who plays Sax

This was the performer and song that broke the racial barrier that kept Roma music from respectability in former Yugoslavia in the early 1960s. she is accompanied by the musician who "discovered her" (and eventually married her), Stevo Teodosievski.

This song came out of an early Bollywood movie that was shown in the former Yugoslavia at a time when Yugoslav Roma were just getting a sense for their roots in India. It has since been recorded numerous times.

we move on to Serbia. There the Roma musicians specialized in fiddle music before the brass band tradition took off. This is one of the more famous Roma fiddle player, part of a whole dynasty of fiddlers

Good sound for a Yugoslav LP of the 1970s. This band won first prize the year this was recorded, at the Guča festival