Live at Tou

A few years ago a group of musicians from the Slovakian Roma community came together with a group of musicians from Norway, the Kitchen Orchestra, to create music that draws on traditional Slovakian Roma folk song. Leading this new Slovak-Norwegian orchestra, now named Angrusori, is Norwegian composer and organist, Nils Henrik Asheim and Czech avant-garde violinist, singer and composer Iva Bittová. This album is the result: the Roma voices sing largely in a Central European chorus style while Bittova wails and the Kitchen Sink Orchestra flesh things out instrumentally. There’s a certain intensity when everything comes together – and the Roma ensemble is often beautiful – but stretches of avant-garde noodling dominate passages.

As with all Bittova does, there’s a large degree of improvisation on her part – which doesn’t always sit comfortably with the Roma ensemble vocalists (they sing with a beautiful dignity, while she shrieks and wails theatrically) and their very disciplined guitarists. The Kitchen Sink Orchestra either hang behind the Roma or dominate when Bittova is out front. The overall effect is only partially successful – while it’s a meeting of cultures, Live at Tou does suggest that the Roma are exotic guests on a well-funded project helmed by Bittova and Asheim, gadje (non-Roma) who easily move across northern Europe’s arts spaces. To my mind, the best Roma/ gadje musical collaboration remains Rivers of Happiness – where a southern Serbian brass band came together with noted jazz trumpeter Duško Gojković to create a beautifully atmospheric Balkan folk-jazz.