MASTER BLASTERS: FANFARE CIOCARLIA RETURN
THE ROMANIAN BRASS BAND TOUR ENGLAND OCTOBER 9 - 13. A RARE OPPORTUNITY TO WITNESS MUSICAL MAGICIANS
On the road again: Fanfare are a force of nature.
Who, you might ask, are Fanfare Ciocarlia? First and foremost they are a Roma brass band from northern Romania. From very humble beginnings FC have gone on to enjoy international success on a level few artists from the “outernational” (my title now “world” has been banished) genre have matched. Indeed, outside of France’s Gipsy Kings, Fanfare are the most popular Romany musicians in the world today.
They are also the planet’s foremost Balkan brass band – Fanfare’s furious brass blast helped popularise Balkan music internationally and led to Balkan Beats club nights (this saw DJs looping Fanfare brass over techno beats and was briefly engaging, the band being far more fluid and funky than the electronic beats merchants).
Their music has soundtracked advertisements for huge brands and appeared on film soundtracks – both the Borat films commissioned Fanfare to provide new tunes, their anarchic sense of fun matching Sacha Baron Cohen’s pranks. While garlanded with awards, the band have never lost their zest for performing good time, high energy, party music. There are far more gifted brass musicians in the Balkans (and elsewhere) but none match Fanfare in their work ethic, energy and sense of fun. Which is why their popularity has sustained for almost three decades.
I have a personal relationship with Fanfare: having seen them perform ever since they first set foot in the UK, I got to visit the band in their home village of Zece Prajin, a tiny hamlet in north eastern Romania, in 2003. Zece Prajin is an isolated hamlet with most of its residents still labouring in the fields (as Fanfare’s members once did). Electricity is intermittent and outdoor toilets remain the rule. Geese and cattle wander the dirt roads while the poorest residents live in shanty housing.
Being a Roma settlement ensures Zece Prajin is marginalised – no train station, no schools – yet for all its poverty the community spirit is strong and there’s a great pride in Fanfare’s success. As with any small town, everyone knows everyone so I attracted a lot of attention – that said, I was accompanying Henry Ernst, the German sound engineer who discovered Fanfare when drifting through Romania in the early 1990s, and Henry is a local hero.
Back then Ernst, aware Romania remained an oasis of vernacular music (due to Ceausescu’s communist regime having banned Western music, so unwittingly preserving local traditions), was on the lookout for interesting sounds. By then Taraf De Haidouks, a Gypsy string band from Wallachia in Romania’s south, had already made a considerable impact in the West (after a Belgian music fan came across their village and determined to bring the ensemble to Belgium).
What was most surprising about Fanfare was the fact they were a brass band – Balkan brass is popular in southern Serbia and Macedonia, a legacy of Ottoman military marching bands, but no one had previously determined such existing in northern Romania up near the border with Ukraine.
Fanfare’s third album, 2001’s Iag Bari, captures their fierce funk and deep folk roots. Its one of the greatest albums of this century.
Fanfare were, it appears, a band who existed out of time. Which is surely how they developed their remarkable sound – so fast, so dynamic, so intense – and they had plied their trade at weddings and festivities across the region for decades.
Being Roma means they (and their community) are marginalised – from Vlad Dracul (the medieval warlord who became the basis for Bram Stoker’s fictional vampire), who enslaved thousands of Roma, until the mid-19th Century, slavery saw these people we came to know as “Gypsies” (because some of the first Roma in Europe suggested they were pilgrims from Egypt) treated as chattels and with considerable cruelty.
Music – one of several trades the Roma practised – was a way out of the worst labour. Fanfare then might have existed, in some form or another, for centuries. While slavery ended well over a century ago in Romania, prejudice against Roma - or “Tzigane”, as they are known in many Balkan nations - remains high in Romania (and Bulgaria).
Ernst took Fanfare to Germany and the response there launched the band across the world: Hollywood clubs, the Sydney Opera House, Womad and many other international institutions welcomed this most unpretentious of ensembles. Ernst produced a series of stunning albums on them – my favourites are Iag Bari and Gili Garabdi (both of which showcase their power, artistry and wit) – and I determined they would feature on the cover of my first book, Princes Amongst Men: Journeys With Gypsy Musicians.
All of which is to note that October sees Fanfare returning to play dates in the UK - this is their first tour here in many years: they command a far larger audience across the Continent (Anglo fear of music that’s not sung in English means FC are overlooked here). This tour then makes for a great opportunity to see a genuinely remarkable ensemble.
There are other Balkan brass bands and a great variety of Gypsy bands, but no one else matches the brass blasters from a hidden village in northern Romania. On stage, night after night, Fanfare Ciocarlia continue to kick out the jams. As these former farmers insist: “Fanfare are the hardest working band in the blow biz!”
FC UK TOUR
09/10/2024
Bristol (UK) The Jam Jar
10/10/2024
Norwich (UK) Norwich Arts Centre
11/10/2024
Manchester (UK) Band on the Wall
12/10/2024
London (UK) Hootananny (early show) & Hootananny (late show)
13/10/2024
Cambridge (UK) Cambridge Junction
A taster, in case you are wondering how Romanian brass might sound.