Traders of the Lost Arts

by Alex Hand

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1.	Dzhanguritsa 04:15	info
2.	Mominshko Horo 07:14	info
3.	Andaluska Ratchenitsa 04:24	info
4.	Kocanska 07:40	info
5.	Fetesti (Geamparalele) 02:49	info
6.	Hora Lalaru 04:02	info
7.	Cudna Jada 02:32	info
8.	Milev's Ratchenitsa 04:21	info

about

This is my first full-length album. It is a culmination of my musical endeavors since graduating music school, moving to Portland, touring the country with Balkan bands, moving to San Francisco, becoming a regular in the gypsy jazz circuit, getting deep into the Balkan scene, and traveling to the Balkans in 2015 to get experience at the source.

The time I spent in Eastern Europe studying this music with masters was indispensable, and some of them surprised me by being as interested in what I do as I was in their music. One of these players, my friend Zlatko Burov, taught me his tune Andaluska, which appears on this album.

The year of this album's release, 2018, marks the centennial anniversary of Yugoslavia, a nation that arose in the Balkans after World War I. Due to all the changing borders and the many stylistic commonalities between Eastern European dance musics, pinpointing where folk tunes are originally from can be difficult, at best. For this reason, and because many immigrants from these countries now live alongside each other in American or Western European cities, often sharing their music with each other, the label "Balkan music" has come to be an umbrella term to include Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbian, Croatian, Albanian, even Greek, Turkish and Romanian music.

Most of the music on this album is a collection of traditional dance tunes from Bulgarian wedding and village traditions, and Romanian hora (a folk swing style which now regularly intersects gypsy jazz).

During communism, jazz, funk and pop records from the west were smuggled in and enjoyed illegally by underground audiences in these countries. The western styles were more widely introduced to a mainstream audience after the borders opened with the fall of the communist era. This led to American jazz and swing, French manouche, classical art music and more being hybridized with local folk dance traditions, and there has been a back and forth of inspiration and adaptation of musics between Eastern Europe, especially Roma communities, and the west ever since. This album is an installment in that history.

This may be a first for many of these tunes being done with a guitar-led group, both in its repertoire and approach. I am happy that it turned into a Balkan folk/funk/jazz/psychedelic fusion project. It defies any acoustic rules of folk music with screaming organ, sax and synth guitar solos. There are long, orchestrated and highly arranged sections that would be unusual in jazz, but improvised solos and reharmonizations of dense chord changes that are usually a trademark of jazz. The material is held to a performance standard that has been with me since music school, but the sound remains grounded as an energetic, accessible dance party. I hope you experience the joy listening that I have had in getting to know this music, making it my own and sharing it.

Thank you to everyone who helped me make this, played on it, rehearsed endlessly, taught me these tunes or introduced me to the source recordings, and provided encouragement and support during these crazy years living as a starving artist in America's most expensive time and place.

credits

released January 19, 2018

Alex Hand: acoustic and electric guitars, tambura
Lewis Patzner: cello
Teddy Raven: sax
Kevin Gerzevitz: organ, accordion, Casio
Isaac Schwartz: drumset
David Boyden: violin (track 1)

Charlie Cohen-recording engineer
Myles Boisen-mastering

Alex Hand-album cover (with an iPhone...maximum shtoyle)

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about

Alex Hand Dallas, Texas

Alex Hand is an American guitarist based in the Dallas area. He graduated from the University of North Texas jazz performance program in 2021.

Alex's music explores traditional European folk sounds with jazz harmony and improvisation, with a heavy lean on Eastern European, gypsy swing and Balkan styles. He's a frequent performer in the Irish scene, especially with his duo, Celtic Standard Time. ... more

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