::: acroAnima :::

Artists
FROM CROATIA

LIDIJA BAJUK

Lidija Bajuk is a writer whose poetry and books are based on the rich heritage of Slavic mythology. But above all, she is a musician with a strong desire to preserve traditional songs of her country and present them to the modern generations.
Her enchanting voice takes one on the journey into the ancient past of the archetypal images hidden in the deepest corners of the soul, into the self-discovery. Listen…
She and her guitar have travelled from Tibet to Columbia, from Greece to Canada. In July 2002 she represented Croatia at the festival EUROMUSICA in
Olympia, Greece, and in October 2002 she performed at the opening of PRIX EUROPA festival in Berlin, Germany, together with the famous Croatian band LEGEN.
Lidija Bajuk's performances vary from solo performances to those where she is accompanied with her band, or performances in duet with the famous
Croatian pianist MATIJA DEDIC.
Matija comes from a well known Croatian music family of Dedic. His mother, Gaby Novak is a singer whose career includes cooperations with L. Armstrong, H.
Merrel, G. Burton, T. Tielmans, P. Woods and others. Matija’s father, Arsen Dedic is also a singer and one of the most successful Croatian songwritters. Matija Dedic won many domestic awards for his work in music. He is playing with many domestic and foreign jazz musicians and was recently a semifinalist at the "Montreaux Solo Jazz Piano Competition 2002".
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MOJMIR NOVAKOVIC i KRIES

In his constant pursuit of all that is unpredictable in the cultural tradition, Mojmir Novakovic, frontman of the legendary Croatian ethno group Legen, got together a new group of musicians. Their name is Kries. In ancient Croatian language, Kries means "bonfire". In many cultures people used to light bonfires to get together, sing and dance and to celebrate life.
Music is like a bonfire. It is a light and a colour in the darkness, the unpredictable adventure, a play…attractive and uniting. The intention of Kries is to revive little sleeping flames of the ancient songs, the sounds of the forgotten musical instruments, and make them a part of the present, thus starting a new voyage of adventure. This new adventure is nothing more then a part of the ancient human’s need for a “sacred” play.
www.kries.info

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DUNJA KNEBL

Dunja Knebl was born in Zagreb. She has lived in the USA, Indonesia and Russia. Most of her life she was a translator and language teacher whereas her favorite hobby had always being singing folk songs from different countries. After discovering in 1993 that thousands of folk songs from her own country had never been recorded, she began interpreting and recording songs she finds in books. Besides recording six albums, she has participated on many compilations and has been nominated for the Croatian Porin (music) award twice. She is the sole author and performer of two theatre performances where she sings songs from the countries she has lived in. Besides taking part in various gigs/concerts/festivals/shows in Croatia and abroad, she has workshops where she teaches participants to sing traditional folk songs.
Her repertory is very wide, and now includes several hundred Croatian folk songs alone. She performs to her own guitar or small percussion accompaniment, or in combinations with different musicians (+ cello and/or + dulcimer and/or + acoustic guitar and/or + double bass and/or + percussions and/or additional vocals).
Info: www.dunjaknebl.com

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AFION

Several years ago, Lidija Dokuzović, a student of ethnology at Zagreb University fell in love with traditional songs of the region of Croatia, Bosnia and especially Macedonia. Feeling an enormous joy while singing them for herself at home, she decided she wants to share that revelation with others. So, in 2003 she formed a band and named it Afion which is a Macedonian word for poppy seeds, but the root of the word is Greek and means opium.
"Traditional songs are opium for us!" declares Afion.
The band performs on accoustic instruments (guitar, bass, balalajka, charango, flute, percussions) enriching the voices of Lidija and Marijela. Even without an album published (yet!) and without being full-time musicians (many members of the band are still attending University) they have performed at many venues of Croatia, but also at some festivals in Slovenia and Bosnia each time filling the dance floors and leaving satisfied audience behind.
Afion is a young band finding inspiration in the old songs, traditional songs full of emotions, energy and above all, fun!
Info: www.afion.net

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TO CROATIA

COMPANYIA ELECTRICA DHARMA
Catalonia (exclusive for Croatia)

The band's main objective is to create music that ascribes to the Mediterranean mentality and sensibility. C.E.D. was started by the Fortuny brothers in 1974.
Nowadays it is the most legendary group in Catalonia. The founders, Esteve, Joan and Josep, successfully introduced into the Iberian rock scene the melodies
and sounds born out of the Mediterranean and Catalan folklore. The band combines, in its own special way, typical rock instruments (drums, bass, electric guitar and synths) with a soprano sax that sounds very similar to the Catalan "tenora". To date the group have released 17 CD's. After 25 years in the profession, this unique, eclectic band has maintained the same spirit that characterises its origins.
Traditional music has always had a nomadic spirit and a good way to travel with that spirit is experiencing Companyia Electrica Dharma alive.

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SECKOU KEITA
Senegal (Senegalese Soul/Afro blues)

This multitalented artist, with a fantastic musical family pedigree, represents the emergence of a new generation of African musicians.
Seckou Keita has a unique style which blends melody with rhythm. Although his father is from Mali, Seckou grew up in one of the established griot families in Senegal where his mother comes from. Under their influence he accepted kora, traditional 21 stringed harp-lute instrument and also became an excellent percussionist.

At the age of 12 he formed his first group, Coute Diomboulou. His international career took off in 1996 while performing at festival in Norway, India and Cuba. Two years later Seckou becomes a member of the famous Baka Beyond and performes all around Europe including concerts at Glastonbury festival and WOMAD.
However, he still appears at many venues as a solo performer impressing the audience with his connection with own roots and talent in playing either kora or percussions.
www.seckoukeita.com
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ZOE’
Italy (exclusive for Croatia)
songs and dances of Salento

Zoè was born in the spring of 1993 out of a group of musicians from Salento (a region in the deep south-east of Italy) with a common need to rediscov er the traditional popular music of their own land. The music of Salento is the result of centuries of varied foreign domination, but more importantly, of exchanges with other Mediterranean cultures.
Zoè’s repertoire includes working songs, love songs in local dialect and in Salentian Greek, protest songs, and especially the ‘Pizzica’ (sting): from the heart and the dances of tarantism. This last rhythm is exciting, tormenting, inebriating, exhilarating, and deeply moving all at once. It is the sum of the rhythms of the heart and breath, the beat of the Earth. It is impossible to remain indifferent, because the persistent crescendo of the tambourine "beats" goes straight to the heart. If the young black people from the urban ghettos narrate, with the help of rap, the poverty and the rage, the Salentinians, from time immemorial, express their feelings and passions by beating the tambourine and by dancing the "pizzica", until they fall into a trance. It's purpose is not only expressive, but also communicative. It's a courting dance.
For this reason, beyond any interpretation, it is enough to listen to the music, to abandon oneself to its movement, to come up against this force, this uncommon musical energy. The rhythm of the Pizzica is of central and fundamental importance to the history of Zoè. "Beating" the pizzica tambourine ("to beat" on the pizzica,or "sting") represents a decisive, profound, and sometimes painful experience for the group. In the joyful but tragic obsession of that movement, in the blood produced by the furious and unending repetition of percussion with the hand, is the difficult and surprising path of cultural possession, which is also the rediscovery of a submerged, forgotten identity.
Zoè has performed in some of the more important festivals in Italy and in Europe: Stimmen, Voices in Lorrach (Germany), Douarnenez in Bretagne (France), Druga Godba (Lubljana), Respect Festival (Prague), Womad Festival (Palermo 2001), Les Nuits Atipiques (Langon, France), Cantigas do Majo (Lisbon), Le Gipfel du Jazz (Friburg), and London Film Festival. The bans was also selected for a showcase at the Womex 2000 in Berlin.
For the group, their collaboration with the film director Edoardo Winspeare was decisive, which culminated in a full-length film,"Sangue Vivo". Zoè collaborated on the film, which was shot entirely in Salento, not only in the realisation of the sound track, but also as actors. Zoè’s two tambourine players, Lamberto Probo and Pino Zimba, have given it their faces and soul (that "beats").
The film Sangue Vivo enjoined great success and garnered awards in many film festivals like: S. Sebastian, Montpellier, N.I.C.E. festival at New York, S. Francisco and Moscow, London Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, Rotterdam, etc…

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Lot Lorien
Bulgaria (exclusive for Croatia & Slovenia)

“Lot Lorien” is a Bulgarian professional fantasy-art-ethno band. If one is to describe the music style, it would be named “world fusion”, based on Bulgarian folklore, folklore of other nations, fantasy, progressive rock, pop, jazz, new age , etc. Impressive for the group is also non standard combination of instruments: electro-acoustic guitar, bass, violin, female vocal, drums, percussions, glockenspiel, tapan, djembe, darbouka and more.
The band has performed at many music festivals and had a tour in following countries: South Korea, Bulgaria, Russian Federation (Russia, Republic of Karelia and Republic of Altai), Serbia and Turkey.
Some of the major names: “European Festival” – Turkey ; Interzone Festival” – Serbia ; “Folk Marathon” – Karelia ; “Greenwave Festival” –Russia ; “Sin Chon Culture Festival” and “Korea Drum Festival” – South Korea ; “Alive Water” - Altai ; “Balkan Music Networks”, “Salon of the arts”, “Sofia Jazz Festival”, “European month of Culture” and “Thracian Summer” in Bulgaria, as well many other.

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Lo Còr de la Plana
France (exclusive for Croatia, Slovenia and Hungary)

Lo Còr de la Plana is a male ensemble from the quarter of La Plaine in Marseille, devotes itself to the Provence Occitan repertory. To date, the five members of Lo Còr have worked on the popular religious repertory of Damase Arbaud and the Christmas chants of Notre-Dame des Doms, as well as on many songs for dancing (rigadoons, bourrées, rondos), including in their compositions and arrangements many elements from the culture of Marseille today (ragamuffin, techno-groove...) Interpreted in unision or in polyphony, accompanied by bender drums or bodily percussion (picaments with the feet and bataments with the hands), screamed or whispered, the chants of the Còr are in the image of the quarter they come from: violent but not cruel, sweet but not mawkish, hard, but not too much.

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Kristi Stassinopoulou
Greece (exclusive for Croatia)

Singer, lyricist and fiction writer Kristi Stassinopoulou, a native Athenian active on Greece’s underground music scene for many years, has generated a wide appeal in the international world music circuit. The successful blend of traditional greek rhythms and sound colours, haunting Byzantine vocal lines, rembetika music, psychedelic rock, ambience and electronica, combined with Kristi’s vivid scenic appearance and personality and her colourful band, sparked great response and led to frequent appearances in world music festivals, mostly in Europe and N. America.
Kristi’s poetic lyrics evoke primordial mythology, alluding to imaginary landscapes, Ssun worship, bright passions and things eternal.
Her albums have been gathering enthusiastic reviews all around the globe (fRoots, New York Herald Tribune, Global Village, Jazz Times, El Pais, Billboard, Time Out and many more), while she has been compared at times to Hedningarna, Steely Span, Patti Smith, Grace Slick, or Bjork.
Accompanied by her long time collaborator composer, arranger, co-producer and multi-instrumentalist -with an all-round grasp of diverse styles- Stathis Kalyviotis, they have made 3 albums of international appeal, Ifantokosmos, Echotropia (WMCE Top 10, released in N. America nad Brasil) and The Secrets of the Rocks.
Her latest album “The Secrets of the Rocks”, 2002, where Kristi manifests her environmental concerns for the developing world, topped the World Music Charts Europe in January 2003 at No 1, Kristi made the cover story of fRoots, UK, in March 2003, and the album has been released until now in the UK, N. America & Spain and soon in CROATIA, TOO!!!
Kristi and Stathis continue their musical voyage, writing new songs, experimenting on environmental sounds and giving live performances in Greece and abroad, combining electro sounds and traditional instruments such as saz, lute, oud, baglamas, lyra or flutes.
Visit the Website >>>

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…and of course there is more…come back later…
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Projects

Festival ETHNOAMBIENT
the pioneer among World music festivals in Croatia

To experience the beauty of diversity join us every Summer at the ancient roman site of Salona in Solin near Split, or come to Zagreb for occasional Ethnoambient evenings. Meet the sounds of Israel, Italy, Mongolia, North-American native people, England, Slovenia, Macedonia, Catalonia, Ireland, Pakistan, Hungary,
Australian native people, Iran, Morocco, Greece and of course Croatia