At one point I will write about the last months of my research, to share some of the interesting and lovely stories I experienced apart from the knowledge and insights, my interviewees shared with me. The result of the latter however, you can read here:

Čoček - Master Dissertation_GG

3^rd April 2018 – Interviews with Zoran and Ferus

I woke up excited and nervous, working very fast in the morning to prepare my questions and equipment for the interviews today and chasing my poor man Mihajlo around for getting all ready. We left, me being even more nervous, to meet Zoran Kraguevski, a Macedonian clarinettist, who is highly educated in various styles such as classical, jazz, Macedonian folklore and of course čoček. A great charismatic character and really nice man on top of it. We had a great conversation, partly interview, partly exchange between musicians. 

He is very keen on čoček, but considers himself more an imitator, as the real čoček can only really be played by Romany people. The Turkish play the original, the Albanians, Greeks and originally the Bulgarian Roma had found their own variants, highly Ottoman influenced, but very skill full and charismatic. The Mcedonian variant he describes as soft and beautiful. Čoček for him is driven by the rhythm, as it is a music for dance. The other main element are the solos; based on makam, and tasteful melody lines, they show off the skill of a player and the quality of a performance. Zoran got very upset, telling us about the corruption of čoček in the new days. He had lived for 30 years in Sweden, and when he came back, all had changes. According to him, it sounded, and still sounds like bebop, too many notes and too little soul. Ivo Papasov and the Bulgarian wedding musicians have started corrupting it, and the new players follow his example and know nothing of makam and the od skills anymore… Very sadly he announced, that if the development will continue as it happens now, in 15 years there will be no more čoček left. Before parting, Zoran promised me a book with all the treasures of čoček notated. Also, we might have a jam, and he would demonstrate old and new čoček style.

After this very rich and lovely conversation, for me around 2 hours of full-on intense conversation to transcribe, we started the adventure to arrange the meeting with Ferus Mustafov, the King of Čoček in Macedonia, and the whole world. On the phone, he asked us what to wear, in case we take a video, and I actually regret, not taking him up on this, as his choice of outfit could well have added even more enrichment to our visit. Coincidentally, Bajsa was passing by, and lead the way to his residence.

The place which I thought would be his home, opened up to be a restaurant including a huge wedding dome – it seemed like that not he is travelling to the weddings he performs, but the weddings he plays are actually coming to him. Certainly in Macedonia, the wedding music industry is financially a strong and well-paid one, and the centre stage for famous musicians, I don’t think I ever met a musician playing for functions with such wealth in whole Europe…

Ferus is a strong character, very confident, and absolutely certain he is and will always be the best. There are only a few famous čoček players around, and all others imitate them. The interview was certainly a highly interesting affair, but more so a quirky and extraordinary experience. Old videos from 1970 caused a lot of giggles; the jokes, and Bajsa making fun of him I unfortunately I only could fully capture later, when translated, as my Yugoslavia mish-mash language makes understanding still difficult. 

A spicy moment was certainly when I asked about the most significant čoček players now and in the last 20-30 years, as next to him, there is only really his nephew, who learned from him, but is not mature enough to be great. About the declining quality of čoček he feels just as sad as Zoran, probably with the believe, that real čoček will die with him.

1^st and 2^nd  April 2018 – 1^st Lesson and Interview with Bajsa

This time my stay in Skopje had an incredibly serious connotation – the research for my Master Dissertation. As I had planned a number of visits, including most of the summertime, it seemed much easier, and also cheaper to rent a flat, and thus, with my lovely Mihajlo, we had rented our first little flat together. A small apartment, pretty central but quiet, with a lovely balcony – the inside however, needed attention, so the moving-in involved removing layers of dirt of the last decade... In the evening we were so shattered, that we did not go to the centre and join the first-of-April celebrations, which would have involved lots of Romani drum and zurla music in the centre, and costumed people – the year before, I saw everything from Hitler to Roma-cross-dressed men and princesses….

Next morning, after some more cleaning and a little warm up on the violin, I made my way up a steep hill to Bajsa’s flat. Bajsa is an incredibly gifted multi-instrumentalist, a great characterful and charismatic person, very well connected in the Folklore and Romani music world, and highly educated and knowledgeable; she was my first interviewee, also the ‘centre point’ to connect with the Masters of čoček, Romani music and ethnomusicologists of Macedonia. Also, I aimed to learn to play čoček including ornamentation from her, or more realistically, to make my first baby steps to play real authentic čoček.

After I was fed with some left-over lunch, we started the interview with all sorts of questions, and I found my well-organised and thought-through interview ending up being a slightly chaotic questionnaire – I realised very quickly, that my strategy did not at all fit the mentality of how Macedonians and Romani people think about čoček and their music in general. Still, with some spontaneous changes, I got a lot of knowledge, and great new insights down on tape. As we are by now something like professional friends, and know each other fairly well, I knew, that I can come back and ask many more questions at any stage.

In our music making I was taught ‘Bursa Čoček. Here a performance by one of her friends, Ilija Ampevski, nickname ‘Ampe’, a clarinettist and saxophonist, who is a non-Romani, but is still highly appreciated by Romani musicians - which is rather the exception, as most non-Romani are only considered as ‘imitators’ of čoček.

Learning phrase by phrase by ear, ornament by ornament – Bajsa is used to teach mostly classical musicians, or western advanced hobby musicians, who do not necessarily have a natural feel for that music, so each time I imitate an ornament and it has the right ‘kick’, she breaks out in a huge, high pitched laugh and ‘gives me 5’. One thing however strikes me about her and other Romani people in general. When it comes to talk about payments, she becomes a different person. Usually generous, bubbling, completely open, and certainly not at all money-driven, she transforms for one moment only into a stern persona, who seems business-orientated, and easily offended; in a way, as if there would be an inherited Romani gene, which suffers from the abuse of having been taken advantage of by white people for centuries, which is turned on for one moment. And I have watched similar weird moments with other Romani, even though, she, and some others have never been in person traumatised by that abuse; she works on a regular basis with Western European non-Romani musician, and earns good money.

Before I departed, she did two quick phone calls, and set me up with a musician colleague of her, Zoran Kraguevski, a clarinettist and saxophonist, and apparently very knowledgeable of čoček and Macedonian music in general, and then, to my great amazement, with the King of čoček, Ferus Mustafovski !!!

The Story of Cocek

A new article of mine - first research on Čoček, which is a Balkan Romani music and dance genre, rather difficult to define... Here what I found in current published literature:

The Story of Čoček

Enjoy !!!