Karandila Junior
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Karandila Junior

Sliven, Sliven, Bulgaria | SELF

Sliven, Sliven, Bulgaria | SELF
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"Gypsy brass band Karandila Junior"

Trumpet player Angel Tichaliev remembers hearing a lot of brass bands back in the old days. But they’re long gone. The older masters started dying; popular tastes changed.

In the Balkans, music has been dominated by Roma or Gypsies for centuries. Since the end of communism, the coming of the free market has meant that much traditional Roma music has been squeezed out by more profitable genres.

Hoping to resurrect the tradition, Tichaliev founded the Karandila Orchestra. But that wasn’t enough. So he built a music room in his house for local children. And he created another ensemble – for kids – to pass on the musical traditions.

“Karandila Junior” was born.

“I hope to God they will go to the conservatory and educate themselves later on, so this tradition can continue,” Tichaliev said. “That’s why I’m doing this, because it hurts me to see this type of music dying.”

The band is made up of young gypsy musicians from Sliven, the gypsy capital of Bulgaria. The gypsy ghetto where the kids live is called “Nadejda,” Bulgarian for “hope.”

Karandila Junior is already winning fans around Europe. The band recently wrapped up their first album.

Tichaliev said their repertoire is made of modernized old songs from their great grandfathers. “We don’t play them like we did 20 or 30 years ago,” he said, “we put in jazz elements and change the harmony. A traditional song, for example, is changed by about 50-60 percent.”

Karandila Junior has 17 members aged ten through eighteen. Through rigorous practice and Tichaliev’s leadership, they get something young Roma rarely find anywhere else in Bulgarian society: Discipline and high expectations.

Nikolai Yordanov is sixteen and plays tenor saxophone. He said he can’t imagine doing anything besides playing music. And, Yordanov loves to perform on stage.

“I pick up the mood of the audience too,” he said. “It feels great, for the people to applaud when you are on stage. They ask for an encore. Then you bow in front of them and play another song. That’s the coolest part for me.”

The song “Yurush” was recorded last year at the Ost Club in Vienna, Austria. And Yordanov said there are other jazz clubs where he’d like to perform. “I want to play in New York in some famous jazz club,” he said, “that’s my dream, because I love jazz and want to be a great jazz musician.”

When Angel Tichaliev was in school, there were few educational opportunities for Roma musicians. But today’s youth have options. And he hopes to inspire the members of Karandila Junior to continue their education in a musical high school, conservatory or university. Only then, he said, would the Gypsy neighborhood called “hope” really live up to its name. - THE WORLD


"'Ghetto Hope': music opens doors to gypsy children"

SLIVEN, Bulgaria — Discordant brass notes escape from a rehearsal room in Sliven's gypsy ghetto, as 15 local boys prepare for band practice and take a break from the poverty-stricken life of the slum outside.
"Now boys -- one, two, three...," band leader Angel Tichaliev calls out and the tunes merge into a bold, lively melody that resonates in the room barely bigger than a one-car garage.
The retired trumpet player formed the Karandila Junior band in 2007 to give a new chance for children and grandchildren of fellow gypsy musicians in this neighbourhood incongruously named Nadezhda, or "hope" in Bulgarian.
"Music is a way to steal the boys away from the everyday reality in the ghetto and to keep the gypsy orchestra tradition alive," says the 56-year-old, who used to play in a military band.
Karandila Junior is Bulgaria's only youth gypsy band. It has already performed at several popular music festivals abroad, including the Vienna Balkan Fever festival and Hungary's famous Sziget Festival.
In January, they released their first album called "Ghetto Hope", named after their run-down slum of 20,000 inhabitants where hope, indeed, is in small supply -- as it is for most of Bulgaria's 700,000-strong Roma community, one of the largest in Europe.
Crowds of ragged children jostle with horse carts in the narrow, laundry-draped alleys of Nadezhda -- notorious since communist times for its high levels of crime, illiteracy and poverty. Chickens peck for food outside the band's rehearsal room, oblivious to the loud music inside.
While Bulgarian Roma are still ghettoised and face rampant prejudice, "there's no such thing as discrimination when it comes to music," insists Tichaliev.
The band's compositions -- a blend of gypsy music, Bulgarian and Turkish folklore and even jazz and reggae -- have received a warm welcome from some of Bulgaria's leading composers and musicians and they have a run of upcoming gigs across the country and in neighboring Macedonia.
"People like us there because we make motley gypsy music where everything sounds natural," Tichaliev says.
-- 'We gypsies have a knack for it' --
His hope to open up new horizons for the boys, aged 12 to 18, seems to be paying off. For some, the Vienna trip was their first time abroad. Others are rethinking goals.
"My dad is a barber and he teaches me, but I want to become a musician," says Rumen, 15, patting his borrowed old trumpet like a pet.
Marian and Filcho, both 12-year-old clarinet players, think music might be a better option than their earlier dreams of becoming great football players.
All the boys play by ear, often improvising during performances. A few have started to learn to read music.
"We gypsies have a knack for it and can't do anything better than this," Tichaliev says.
He insists that all his boys go to school "even if I don't quite know how well they teach them there."
While he hopes some will study music seriously some day, his immediate dreams involve replacing the band's ageing instruments and finding money for new performance suits since many boys have grown out of their old ones.
"Friends here and abroad help me financially but in Bulgaria hardly anyone ever takes it upon himself to lend a hand," he says. As for support from government Roma programmes, they have contributed nothing, he shrugs.
Undeterred, Tichaliev is planning a second album for Karandila Junior and wants to form an even younger Karandila Mini band next year.
Candidates are plentiful, judging by the faces peeking in the window during rehearsals or sneaking into the room to listen. When Tichaliev steps away for a moment, 10-year-old Asen grabs a bass guitar almost twice as big as himself and plays to applause from other boys.
"Rehearsal's over. Cut out the cacophony," Tichaliev snaps and the boys scurry out onto the puddle-covered alley to head home along the concrete wall that hides their slum from Sliven's railway station. - AFP


"Karandila Junior (Gypsy Brass Band From Bulgaria)"

Karandila Junior, a band of 16 Gypsy children aged between 10 and 18 years, was formed in 2007 in Sliven’s “Nadezhda” (“Hope”) district, a ghetto famous for its high levels of crime, illiteracy and poverty, which twentythousand Roma people call home.
The project aims to break these stereotypes and offer a different cultural perspective of this ghetto.
The album “Ghetto Hope” puts forward music, which has no analog in Western culture – authentic Gypsy compositions mixed with elements from Bulgarian and Turkish folklore, as well as with jazz and even reggae. The great musician Angel Tichaliev – a driving force behind the original Karandila orchestra – cultivated and developed the talent possessed by these young diamonds in the rough. While listening to the band you will find yourself in a different, unknown world, sincere and sunny in a childlike way. Like a flowing river of life, these children leave behind the endless misery and any prejudices that plague their everyday lives in this hectic crisis-laden civilization. The unique quality
of the music is underlined by the fact that world famous Bulgarian musicians like Milcho Leviev, Theodosii Spassov and Vladimir Karparov, agreed to appear on the album.
“Angel’s Club” is a small music school of Angel Tichaliev, a man whose dream came true. Over the years, Angel gave children the gift of love for music and the dream that now shines in the eyes of each and every one of them: to become professional musicians.
In addition to the project, the band helps preserve and pass on the traditions from generation to generation of Bulgarian brass bands, whose numbers have been declining rapidly during the last two decades, due to the extensive use of electronic devices in music production. This album is an example of tradition in the fundamental meaning of the word, namely as the preservation of the uniqueness of Bulgarian, Roma and Balkan folklore.

http://myspace.com/karandilajr

Contact:
Ambrol Iglenikov a.k.a. Joro
office@balkan-fever.com
Mob.(AT): +43 676 67 369 76
Mob.(BG): +359 889 87 87 72
KARANDILA JUNIOR
(Gypsy Brass Band From Bulgaria - Balkan Fever


Discography

"Ghetto Hope" 2011

Photos

Bio

Karandila Junior, a band of 16 Gypsy children aged between 10 and 18 years, was formed in 2007 in Sliven’s “Nadezhda” (“Hope”) district, a ghetto famous for its high levels of crime, illiteracy and poverty, which twentythousand Roma people call home.

The great musician Angel Tichaliev – a driving force behind the original Karandila orchestra – cultivated and developed the talent possessed by these young diamonds in the rough. While listening to the band you will find yourself in a different, unknown world, sincere and sunny in a childlike way. Like a flowing river of life, these children leave behind the endless misery and any prejudices that plague their everyday lives in this hectic crisis-laden civilization. The unique quality
of the music is underlined by the fact that world famous Bulgarian musicians like Milcho Leviev, Theodosii Spassov and Vladimir Karparov, agreed to appear on the album.

“Angel’s Club” is a small music school of Angel Tichaliev, a man whose dream came true. Over the years, Angel gave children the gift of love for music and the dream that now shines in the eyes of each and every one of them: to become professional musicians.

In addition to the project, the band helps preserve and pass on the traditions from generation to generation of Bulgarian brass bands, whose numbers have been declining rapidly during the last two decades, due to the extensive use of electronic devices in music production. This album is an example of tradition in the fundamental meaning of the word, namely as the preservation of the uniqueness of Bulgarian, Roma and Balkan folklore.