Once the former Yugoslavia's biggest rock star, he received international acclaim when he embraced the Gypsy rhythms of his native Balkans on soundtracks for Emir Kusturica's films
Twenty-five years ago, Goran Bregovic was a philosophy graduate. The slim 62-year-old still looks the part, even though – he says – he was "rescued from the sad destiny of teaching Marxism" by rocketing to fame "literally, in one week", as leader of the former Yugoslavia's biggest ever rock group, Bijelo Dugme (White Button). Though not of Gypsy parentage himself, Bregovic was already a devotee of Balkan Gypsy brass music – "we used to have Gypsy bands play in our dressing room to get us in a good mood for stadium gigs"– and was approached by fledgling film director Emir Kusturica to write a soundtrack for his 1988 movie Time of the Gypsies.
Neither Kusturica nor Bregovic have ever looked back. The figure in front of me, his hair appropriately grizzled but luxuriant, produced two more award-winning soundtracks for the director, plus a series of highly successful Gypsy-rock albums, pop operas, including a Gypsy Carmen, oratoria, song poems and at one point even advertising jingles. He also embarked on what seems like an intermittent but endless world tour of "the best festivals and concert halls in the world, and also shitty places like Novosibirsk".
We first meet in a Marseilles hotel room, then catch up at a chalet in a mountain resort near Sarajevo, from where he will drive to his house in Belgrade, before taking a flight to Australia and the Sydney Opera House. "This is how I work," he says. "I'm an old-fashioned live musician, not a TV guy."
The current tour is theoretically linked to the launch of Bregovic's new album Champagne for Gypsies, a goodtime record replete with the trademark Gypsy brass of his Weddings and Funerals Orchestra, touches of newer manele urban Gypsy pop, galloping rhythms, and a rich cast of vocalists, including four members of the venerable French rumba gitane combo the Gypsy Kings. "The destiny of these songs, at least in the Balkans, is to have the women dancing on the tables and the musicians getting lots of tips," Bregovic says.
Nonetheless, if the album is, as he reiterates, "fun music – joyful actually", it comes with a serious subtext. The album sleeve contains throwaway references to society's debt to a curious selection of Gypsies: Django Reinhardt, Mother Teresa, Elvis Presley, Ronnie Wood, Adam Ant, all of whom, according to Bregovic's research, have Gypsy ancestry. "All over Europe, Gypsies are being persecuted again," he says, referring to the shanty towns of Romany economic refugees sprouting on the periphery of Paris, where he has another home. "I remember the huge encampment of Kosovan Gypsies under a bridge in Belgrade during the Balkan war ... I just wanted to remind people of what Gypsy culture has given the world. Just send out a little signal."
Bregovic has his own debt to Gypsydom, and vice versa, and thereby hangs a certain amount of controversy. He has built a career on the use of Gypsy culture, and his success has contributed greatly to the new appetite for Balkan Gypsy music around the world. As a result of its international vogue, its popularity has grown back home, where it was unfashionable for years due to its former status as government-promoted folklore, or "communist shit" in Bregovic's pithier terminology. But Bregovic has also been accused of registering traditional melodies, or even specific Gypsy musicians' melodies, as his own: the great standard Ederlezi is a case in point, or the track Mesecina from Bregovic's hit album Underground, which the late singer Saban Bajramovic once claimed was a version of one of his songs, though Bajramovic did seem to remember signing some paper with Bregovic about it.
Bregovic deflects these complaints with a mixture of frankness – "everyone starts from existing melodies ... composing is kleptomaniac work"– and dismissal – "this is just gossip". Whatever, the complexities of Balkan copyright enforcement, and the lure of working on his prestigious projects, deter most jobbing musicians from rocking the boat too vigorously.
For his new world tour, a couple of dozen musicians are involved, half the maximum Bregovic sometimes marshals. "There will be six male singers, a string quartet, I'll do some liturgical pieces, some stuff from movies, some of Champagne for Gypsies." None of the star guests from the album will be coming, though all the agents are asking for them. Can he still reproduce the Gypsy Kings numbers live without them? "Oh, sure," says Bregovic laconically, "I've got very good singers." In fact, Bregovic has very good everything. The Weddings and Funerals Orchestra I saw in Marseille was a crack outfit, drilled to perfection, a mixture of authentic Gypsy players –the Kosovan refugee goc drummer Muharem Redzepi – and conservatory pros such as saxophonist Stojan Dimov.
Further new plans encompass another opera, "a drinking and dancing version of Orfeo", commissioned by an Italian festival, although because of that country's political chaos "now nobody knows if there's still funding ... "
Bregovic doesn't sound nervous. If anyone's going to emerge from the economic shipwreck that is Europe with a full engagement book, it's him.
Goran Bregovic's world tour begins on Friday 8 March, including appearances at Womadelaide on Mon 11 March, the Adelaide festival on Tues 12 March and the Royal Festival Hall in London on 18 May. The Guardian is the Adelaide festival's partner, supported by Emirates, and the media partner of Womad at Charlton Park in the UK in July. Reported by guardian.co.uk 16 hours ago.
Twenty-five years ago, Goran Bregovic was a philosophy graduate. The slim 62-year-old still looks the part, even though – he says – he was "rescued from the sad destiny of teaching Marxism" by rocketing to fame "literally, in one week", as leader of the former Yugoslavia's biggest ever rock group, Bijelo Dugme (White Button). Though not of Gypsy parentage himself, Bregovic was already a devotee of Balkan Gypsy brass music – "we used to have Gypsy bands play in our dressing room to get us in a good mood for stadium gigs"– and was approached by fledgling film director Emir Kusturica to write a soundtrack for his 1988 movie Time of the Gypsies.
Neither Kusturica nor Bregovic have ever looked back. The figure in front of me, his hair appropriately grizzled but luxuriant, produced two more award-winning soundtracks for the director, plus a series of highly successful Gypsy-rock albums, pop operas, including a Gypsy Carmen, oratoria, song poems and at one point even advertising jingles. He also embarked on what seems like an intermittent but endless world tour of "the best festivals and concert halls in the world, and also shitty places like Novosibirsk".
We first meet in a Marseilles hotel room, then catch up at a chalet in a mountain resort near Sarajevo, from where he will drive to his house in Belgrade, before taking a flight to Australia and the Sydney Opera House. "This is how I work," he says. "I'm an old-fashioned live musician, not a TV guy."
The current tour is theoretically linked to the launch of Bregovic's new album Champagne for Gypsies, a goodtime record replete with the trademark Gypsy brass of his Weddings and Funerals Orchestra, touches of newer manele urban Gypsy pop, galloping rhythms, and a rich cast of vocalists, including four members of the venerable French rumba gitane combo the Gypsy Kings. "The destiny of these songs, at least in the Balkans, is to have the women dancing on the tables and the musicians getting lots of tips," Bregovic says.
Nonetheless, if the album is, as he reiterates, "fun music – joyful actually", it comes with a serious subtext. The album sleeve contains throwaway references to society's debt to a curious selection of Gypsies: Django Reinhardt, Mother Teresa, Elvis Presley, Ronnie Wood, Adam Ant, all of whom, according to Bregovic's research, have Gypsy ancestry. "All over Europe, Gypsies are being persecuted again," he says, referring to the shanty towns of Romany economic refugees sprouting on the periphery of Paris, where he has another home. "I remember the huge encampment of Kosovan Gypsies under a bridge in Belgrade during the Balkan war ... I just wanted to remind people of what Gypsy culture has given the world. Just send out a little signal."
Bregovic has his own debt to Gypsydom, and vice versa, and thereby hangs a certain amount of controversy. He has built a career on the use of Gypsy culture, and his success has contributed greatly to the new appetite for Balkan Gypsy music around the world. As a result of its international vogue, its popularity has grown back home, where it was unfashionable for years due to its former status as government-promoted folklore, or "communist shit" in Bregovic's pithier terminology. But Bregovic has also been accused of registering traditional melodies, or even specific Gypsy musicians' melodies, as his own: the great standard Ederlezi is a case in point, or the track Mesecina from Bregovic's hit album Underground, which the late singer Saban Bajramovic once claimed was a version of one of his songs, though Bajramovic did seem to remember signing some paper with Bregovic about it.
Bregovic deflects these complaints with a mixture of frankness – "everyone starts from existing melodies ... composing is kleptomaniac work"– and dismissal – "this is just gossip". Whatever, the complexities of Balkan copyright enforcement, and the lure of working on his prestigious projects, deter most jobbing musicians from rocking the boat too vigorously.
For his new world tour, a couple of dozen musicians are involved, half the maximum Bregovic sometimes marshals. "There will be six male singers, a string quartet, I'll do some liturgical pieces, some stuff from movies, some of Champagne for Gypsies." None of the star guests from the album will be coming, though all the agents are asking for them. Can he still reproduce the Gypsy Kings numbers live without them? "Oh, sure," says Bregovic laconically, "I've got very good singers." In fact, Bregovic has very good everything. The Weddings and Funerals Orchestra I saw in Marseille was a crack outfit, drilled to perfection, a mixture of authentic Gypsy players –the Kosovan refugee goc drummer Muharem Redzepi – and conservatory pros such as saxophonist Stojan Dimov.
Further new plans encompass another opera, "a drinking and dancing version of Orfeo", commissioned by an Italian festival, although because of that country's political chaos "now nobody knows if there's still funding ... "
Bregovic doesn't sound nervous. If anyone's going to emerge from the economic shipwreck that is Europe with a full engagement book, it's him.
Goran Bregovic's world tour begins on Friday 8 March, including appearances at Womadelaide on Mon 11 March, the Adelaide festival on Tues 12 March and the Royal Festival Hall in London on 18 May. The Guardian is the Adelaide festival's partner, supported by Emirates, and the media partner of Womad at Charlton Park in the UK in July. Reported by guardian.co.uk 16 hours ago.