Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Klarisa Jovanovič & Della Segodba
Label: Celinka
Release: 2013
Runtime: 52:37
Rating: 4.5/5
Klarisa Jovanovič is another one of those special vocal figures who has been pouring her extraordinary interpretive power into all kinds of encounters with musical magic for years now. She has always cashed in her big talent well whenever she flirted with the traditional folk melos of our globe. And of course, her recoding of these musical forms has always welcomed jazz experimentation into its creative bosom with wide-open arms. This time, together with a crew of excellent collaborators called Della Segodba, she has set off on an adventure around the Mediterranean, or rather its eastern part, with covers drawn from the east and a hinterland reaching all the way into Asia Minor.
Once again it’s full of experimental challenge. And? Once again it’s a full-on success. Everything revolves around Klarisa’s unique vocal character. She has the rare virtue of using her finely tuned feel for folk musical heritage to slip effortlessly into all sorts of emotions, adapt to them, and pull the essential traits out of her voice to re-create them. The music behind her vocal play offers a supple seat the whole way through, one where emotion, especially passion, longing, pain and sorrow, can be sincerely magnified! The members of this assembled crew, who work first-rate in such company, are true hunters of this kind of musical challenge. They’re specialists in recoding ethno culture through the prism of their own perception, and in their ideas of free improvisation and adaptation they give birth to adventurously carved little notions that thrill.
Simply put, all the musicians involved in this project have so much mileage behind them, along with long-standing acquaintances and friendships, meaning ties across the various musical projects they’re part of, that there are no “hiding places” on the album »Medinteran«. The Della Segodba crew is bound by starting points of creating and taking in music (the perception of music) on roughly the same wavelengths, so musicians like these quickly understand each other once you put them together on a stage or in a studio. Even if they met for the first time at some random jam session, they’d quickly find a common language and the unique magic of chemistry between them would soon be created.
This web of chemical bonds between the musicians sparks most intensely in the slower, more inward-looking moments, like the album’s sixth track, the Sephardic »Cuando Te Vide«, a melancholic ballad confession that needs an especially fragile, unpretentious and almost gentle accompaniment behind Klarisa Jovanovič’s vocal figure. The masterful backing crew delivers exactly that, so the arrangement works at full strength on this track. The crew also dives in and adapts superbly to the ideas of the Montenegrin »Poljem se vija«, where you can’t miss the important addition of the Arabic lute from Igor Bezget (a guest musician). The feelings are tightly magnified and genuine, so it’s not hard to imagine the originals, where folk tunes lie over a fiddle accompaniment. Atanasovski, once again, jumps in mid-song with some jazz-cut forms, implants them into the leading melos and so directs a complete jazz about-turn in the track. That’s exactly one of the most attractive traits of the album »Medinteran«. That touch of unpredictability brought in by the strong attribute of freedom in the musicians’ experimenting.
The cross-section of the Mediterranean in the hands of Klarisa Jovanovič and Della Segodba is a showcase of an incredibly varied culture and ethnological peculiarities, which this part of the European territory offers, brilliantly crossed with the unique musical perception of the creators of the album “Medinteran”. It carries an exceptional allure, the full-blooded effect of a symbiosis between the trademarks of Mediterranean melos and the jazz grounding of experimental mischief!
The music has a solid rhythmic form that comes from flirting with the traditional rhythms of the Mediterranean region. Alongside Klarisa’s seductive “chanson-ing”, the wind mastery of Vasko Atanasovski is constantly added, as he picks from his rich arsenal of command over many wind instruments, carefully choosing how to loosen up and contrast Klarisa’s basic vocal with a palette of sound colors. This interplay of vocal lines and wind lines strengthens the pithiness of the statement itself and the moods of the songs. For the most part. At the same time, the ornaments with violin in La Carpinese, or with Arabic lute in Dos Amantes Tengo and the already mentioned Cuando Te Vide, work just as well in the same way. All these additions and the inclusion of jazz forms, woven into the basic motifs, contribute an important element to the album »Medinteran«. The otherwise predictable melos and the very development of events within the songs get loosened up and set in motion by jazz figures, since such an addition effectively breaks up this predictable fixedness of the lead melodies and the framed form of the songs. The melos of the great majority of songs is backed by a strong “arabesque” character, which is perfectly natural given their geographic origin. And Vasko Atanasovski really finds his feet in waters like these!
Above all, it’s an interesting decision that the crew takes on covers of three traditional songs belonging to the Sephardic ethnic community of the Iberian Peninsula. And Klarisa, as on all the other songs on the album »Medinteran«, sings these verses in Sephardic too, the authentic language, which in such a situation is the only right solution.
Honey and Teran, then! Sweet and bitter! An album for gourmets who’ll let themselves be fully seduced by a unique experiment, where, bathed in total freedom, the many forms of traditional Mediterranean melos selflessly join hands with the sharp genius of improvisational acrobatics. And all of it is irresistibly subordinated to the traits of the almost sensual immersion of Klarisa Jovanovič’s vocal interpretation.
Lineup
Klarisa Jovanovič – vocals
Vasko Atanasovski – soprano saxophone, alto saxophone, flute, voice, backing voice, milk cans (percussion)
Luka Ropret – guitar, backing voice
Žiga Golob, double bass, backing vocals
GUEST MUSICIANS:
Jelena Ždrale – violin, viola
Igor Bezget – Arabic lute, sarod
Marjan Stanič – drums, percussion
Danilo Ženko – backing voice
Production
Danilo Ženko, Klarisa Jovanovič & Luka Ropret
Track list
1. Zrasla mi ladonja (Croatia)
2. La Rama de Muez (Sephardic)
3. Roža Katarina (Slovenia)
4. Marija Madalena (France – Provence)
5. Saranta Meres (Greece)
6. Cuando Te Vide (Sephardic)
7. Poljem se vija ( Montenegro / Herzegovina)
8. Ypne Pou Pairnes Te Mikra (Greece/Turkey
9. Le Povara Cecilia (Italy – Veneto)
10. Dos Amantes Tengo (Sephardic)
11. Kato Sto Yalo (Greece – Asia Minor)
12. Yo’MEnamori D’Un Aire (Sephardic)
13. La Carpinese (Italy – Aquileia)
14. Andolka / Üsküdara / Gideriken (Bosnia / Turkey)
15. Sejdefu Majka Budjaše (Bosnia / Montenegro)
