Ambrassband

Ambrassband have been playing furiously fast gypsy music since 2002. They are known for their vigorous bass and rhythm section and their live performances of Eastern-European and Balkan fanfares always carry an atmosphere of joyful chaos.

Blazin’ Quartet

Blazin Quartet’s distinctive, Balkan-influenced sound has won them numerous awards, including at the 2008 Dutch Jazz Competition. With band members from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Romania, Bulgaria and Sweden, the group draws on the jazz, folk and classical traditions of each of their home countries, and combines them with electronic sounds to create their own structurally complex and richly rhythmic brand of contemporary jazz.

Boban and Marko Marković Orchestar (Serbia)

Boban and Marko Marković Orkestar is the most famous brass band to emerge from the Western Balkans. Founded in 1984, this 12-member band has won several of the most important prizes at Guča Trumpet Festival – the most important Balkan Brass Band Festival in the region. The group has received international acclaim after it performed music for Emir Kusturica's films Arizona Dream (1993) and Underground (1995). Since then, they have released eight international albums and played in festivals and concerts all over Europe, as well as in the United States and Canada.

Read more about Boban and Marko Marković Orchestar here (English only).

Branko Galoić & Skakavac Orkestar (Croatia)

Branko Galoić is a composer and singer-songwriter from Ivanic Grad, Croatia, whose soulful gypsy-blues has won him international acclaim. Jazzism magazine in the Netherlands named his debut album, ‘Above the Roofs’, one of the best records of 2006. Blending rap, rock and South American music with the influence of his Balkan roots, this now Amsterdam-based talent continues to attract both local and international audiences.

Caspian Hat Dance

Amsterdam based Caspian Hat Dance plays original and traditional gypsy music, klezmer music, and folk. They have toured around Europe as well as in the US.

Irina Karamarkovic (Kosovo*)

The multi-talented musician Irina Karamarkovic studied ballet, piano and flute before forming her first band at the age of thirteen and going on to study jazz at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Graz, Austria. With her current project, Songs from Kosovo, Karamarkovic gives new meaning to traditional songs passed down to her from her parents, and their parents and grandparents before them. Attempting to preserve these story-telling ballads, she presents them to new audiences with her emotionally powerful voice.

Jaune Toujours

The Belgian-based Jaune Toujours is an explosive mix of cultures, languages and styles of music: rock, chanson, ska, gypsy, balkan and brassband. Already their debut album "Brusk" got raving reviews, being voted by FolkWorld’s editors Best CD of 2000.

Kako Da Ne (Bosnia and Herzegovina)

DJ collective Kako Da Ne have their roots in the Balkan music scene, but their sounds are truly global. Their music combines anything and everything from gypsy reggae to Balkan beats, Japanese ska, and folk sounds from around the globe, from Peru to Hungary.

King Naat Veliov & the Original Kočani Orkestar (the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia)

Taking their name from their hometown in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Kočani Orkestar is a Balkan brass band with distinctive flavours of Turkish and Latin music. In 1998 they appeared performing in Emir Kusturica’s film ‘Time of the Gypsies’. Since then, they have gone on to achieve international fame with tours through Europe and Canada, but have remained loyal to their roots and continue to play at weddings and christenings in the town where bandleader, Naat Veliov, was born into a family of trumpet players.

Mala Vita

Mala Vita is a truly European band. With members from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Italy and the Netherlands, they sing in Italian, Spanish, French and Bosnian – often combining several languages to create a unique idiom they call ‘Malavitosi’. Their musical influences are no less varied, blending polka punk, ska, reggae and Latin American beats. Since their formation in 2001, Mala Vita have won over audiences across Europe with their energetic live performances.

Rambo Amadeus (Montenegro)

Antonije Pušić aka Rambo Amadeus (born in Montenegro, lives in Serbia) has been a dominant force on the Balkan music scene since the late 1980s. Over the years, his musical style has drawn on everything from turbo folk to opera, by way of rock, jazz-funk and drum ‘n’ bass. The self-proclaimed ‘World Mega Emperor’ combines musical improvisation with ironic wit to make satirical statements on Balkan societies and human nature. His live shows are famously unpredictable, always creating an unforgettable experience.

Robert Soko DJ Set (Bosnia and Herzegovina)

DJ Robert Soko, born in 1970 in Zeneca in Bosnia and Herzegovina, is one of the fathers of BalkanBeats – a genre of party music that combines Balkan folk music with rock, ska and urban electronic sounds, and which, in recent years, has become a global phenomenon. Soko grew up in former Yugoslavia listening to western-influenced guitar music, and spent his early twenties “wandering Europe and learning languages”. On 3 October 1990 – the day of the German reunification – Soko arrived in Berlin. Playing DJ sets that brought together East and West, he tapped into a special energy, thanks to which he keeps audiences dancing to dawn not only in Berlin, but also in New York, Paris and London.

Read more about Robert Soko here (English only).

Trio C tot de Derde

Dutch trio Trio C tot de Derde play an emotionally rich take on klezmer and Balkan gypsy-music. Swooping from heartbreakingly sorrowful refrains to pure euphoria, their penchant for improvisation makes every performance a unique experience.

Va Fan Fahre

Va Fan Fahre started out in 2003 playing klezmer. As their sound developed, Romanian and Bulgarian brass became a big part of their repertoire. Since their first international tour in 2005, Va Fan Fahre have built a well-deserved international reputation and have been included on numerous compilation albums.

Aslı Erdoğan (Turkey)

The first of her five books published, Kabuk Adam (The Shell Man), established Aslı Erdoğan as one of the most respected authors from Turkey. Besides being an award-winning novelist, Erdoğan is known for her poems, short stories and travel essays. She is also a human rights activist, who has tackled in her work many controversial issues such as prisons, torture and violence against women.

Ayşe Kulin (Turkey)

Turkish writer Ayşe Kulin started out working in film and television, picking up awards for both her screenplays and cinematography. She released her first collection of short stories in 1984, and later became known for her widely acclaimed biographies and novels. In 1997, the İstanbul Communication Faculty chose her as the "Writer of the year" for her biographical novel Adı: Aylin. She won the same award the next year for her short story Geniş Zamanlar. Kulin is a Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF.

Damir Šodan (Croatia)

Damir Šodan, one of the most interesting and talented Croatian poets of the younger generation, was born in Split in 1964 and majored in English Language and Literature, and History, at Zagreb University. Alongside poetry, Šodan also writes for theatre. In 2000, his play Zaštićena zona (Safe Area) won him the first prize in the playwriting competition for playwrights from former Yugoslavia, organised by the m.b.h. theatre in Vienna and the Dutch cultural foundation Kultuur Kontakt.

Daša Drndić (Croatia)

Daša Drndić was born in Zagreb in 1946 and graduated from the Philological Faculty at the University of Belgrade in 1968. She is a lecturer in the English Department at the University of Rijeka and a writer of popular fiction, with eleven books of prose to her name. Her work has been translated into several languages including Dutch, English, French and German.

Igor Štiks (Turkey)

Igor Štiks was born in 1977 in Sarajevo. He is an award-winning novelist and post-doctoral research fellow on the CITSEE (Europeanisation of Citizenship in the Successor States of the Former Yugoslavia). Štiks is a prolific writer of essays and literary criticism and has edited anthologies of Croatian fiction. His novel A Castle in Romagna (2000) received the award for the ‘best first novel’ in Croatia, and has since then been translated into several languages. His second novel, Elijah's Chair’, won the prestigious Ksaver Sandor Gjalski literature prize in 2006.

Mario Levi (Turkey)

Mario Levi is the author of five novels and two volumes of short stories. His work often deals with the experiences of minority groups in Turkish society and occasionally includes autobiographical elements. His latest novel, Where Were You When Darkness Fell (2009), tells the story of a group of friends reunited in Istanbul after thirty years separation, and the narrator’s battle to reconcile the political ideals of his youth with the his comfortable, middle-aged existence.

Mustafa Kör (Turkey/Belgium)

Mustafa Kör was born in Turkey and emigrated to Belgium when he was three years old. He published his first novel De Lammeren (The Lambs) in 2007 and received the El Hizjra Prize of Literature for Uitverkorene (The Chosen).

Nenad Veličković (Bosnia and Herzegovina)

Nenad Veličković is a playwright, novelist and short-story writer from Bosnia and Herzegovina. Having lived through the Balkan wars, his novels such as Lodgers (2005) describe the day-to-day struggles of life in wartime with both humour and humanity. His work has been translated into several languages.

Perihan Mağden (Turkey)

Turkish author Perihan Mağden has been described by Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk as “one of the most inventive and outspoken writers of our time”. Her darkly comic novels have been bestsellers in Turkey and their translations have won her international praise.

Aneta Lesnikovska (the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia)

After finishing her third university year in her hometown Skopje in 1992, Aneta Lesnikovska moved to the Netherlands. She studied audiovisual art in Amsterdam and film and video in New York. Her first feature Does it hurt? First Balkan Dogma was nominated for the Tiger Award at the International Film Festival in Rotterdam in January 2007, and won the Special Jury Award for innovative filmmaking at the Bermuda International Film Festival in March 2007.

Gjergj Xhuvani (Albania)

Gjergj Xhuvani was born in 1963, in Tirana (Albania). In 1986, he graduated from the Arts Academy (majoring in the dramatic arts) in Tirana. Having worked worked as an assistant director on many films, he directed his first short film Bardh e zi in 1991. The author of scenarios of animation films, he has also published two novels. Xhuvani is one of Albania’s most acclaimed directors. His second feature film Slogans won the Youth Award at Cannes Film Festival in 2001.