Album Review: Golden Horns: Best of Boban & Marko Markovic Orkesta by Boban & Marko Markovic Orchestra

The Markovics, father and son, have become the byword for Balkan trumpet playing. Father Boban was already a major star with his band, pushing the envelope with forays into different styles outside their comfort zone (and that Roma sound is the heartbeat of Balkan Brass). So, alongside "Sina Nari," there is the traditional "Hava Naguila" (not a great leap to klezmer), or "Obecanje," which ventures into Latin music.

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Maybe you have to see them live. In Chicago back in 2008, the headlong rush was incredible—virtuosic but off-kilter, like flying along in one of those Indiana Jones mine cars only perfectly, surrounded by control and chaos all at once. Whatever musical devices they used to get that effect—percussion perched on top of the beat? horns going slightly sharp? certainly the solos were more unhinged—the rush comes across only occasionally on Golden Horns, a compilation from the Boban i Marko Markovi? Orkestar, Serbia’s premier brass band led by father Boban (flugelhorn) i son Marko (trumpet).

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Accessible best-of set from the brassy Serbian heavyweights. John Doran 2012 The songs of the Boban i Marko Marković Orkestar might well be as unfamiliar as they are unpronounceable to the average Brit, but that doesn’t mean the Serbians aren’t big news on their home turf of Eastern Europe. In 2000 Oasis were due to take the main stage at the Sziget festival in Hungary but when it was pointed out to them that half of their 30,000 audience was watching this insanely popular Serbian brass band on the world music stage, they wisely decided to wait until they’d finished their set before swaggering on to play.

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Balkan music has a deeply rooted tradition that, in North America, mostly begins and ends with Gogol Bordello. But anyone who digs deeper into the music of the Roma people of Eastern Europe will no doubt come across the name Boban Markovi?. Considered one of greatest Balkan bandleaders of all time, his legendary brass ensembles have revitalized the region's storied scene.

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