1st April 2016 - Arrival and 1st April Fool’s Festival

My new Macedonia venture/adventure started on the 1^st April – no, not as an April’s joke, but with the serious mission to improve my language and to learn lots of music from My Romani friends, possibly start to set up a research and performance project. Also, I swore myself, this time I will overcome my shyness and hesitation of taking pix of people, so I will not end up with nothing visual/aural to bring back.

This time I have been travelling by aeroplane this time, from Munich via Zagrep to Skopje. My suitcase is full of German Easter sweets, which I can share with my Romany friends.

In Zagrep already I felt great improvement to my language skills when ordering a coffee at the airport.

Arriving in Skopje was not spectacular in anyway, neither checking into my hotel. However, the story changed itself by 180 degrees, when arriving in the centre, at the Makedonia Square. Walking there I got a complete shock, when seeing amongst lots of funny characters, a girl dressed as Hitler ! After this, lots of miniature spiderman, batman and superman as well as tiny princesses, witches and other characters walked past me.

   

Approaching the square, one could hear already the tapan beats followed by zurna sounds. Coming closer, the next phenomenon hit me: Young Rom men dressed as women! At first, it was not so apparent, as they were young (around 14-18 years old) and beautiful, so they could be taken for women.

    

   

Around the square there were two groups of musicians, each surrounded by a cluster of people, dancing chatting and enjoying themselves. The vast majority were Romany. I enjoyed the dancing a bit on the side, before I managed to meet my London friend and Magic Music Class student Simon, who accidentally was in the same time in Skopje as me. We watched the colourful and fun chaos a bit more before a staged music performance started.

  

Unfortunately, this one was a disappointment. Here we are two mad-for-Macedonian-music people, waiting eagerly, expectantly for an amazing performance in the heart of Skopje, just to hear a group playing some kind of acoustic Turkish-influenced Dervish music, a nice group, they would have been if not killed by a nasty sound quality – I think the sound engineer tried to get the ‘drum’n’bass’ frequencies of their balamas amplified… However, they looked amazing in their black-magic costums.

  

Followed they were by indie-pop-cover stuff… Well, we joined further back the Romany party again.

On our way back trying to locate my bus stop, we cam across some cute Romany busking kid, trying to make some dinara with the 1^st two lines of ‘Ederlezi’.