ARTIST: Shukar Collective
COUNTRY: Romania
GENRE: Electro-Balkan-Gypsy-World-Fusion
MORE ABOUT: The Shukar Collective was born from the meeting of new generation musicians with the gypsy traditions of Shukar founders Napoleon, Tamango and Clasic. Shukar play ursari music (ursar means bear tamer or bear handler) using spoons, wooden barrels or darabouka to create a powerful and urgent sound that is emotional and soulful at the same time.
On the one side of Shukar Collective are the rroma singers, often incorrectly called gypsies, from rural, sub-standard living conditions, who work in terrible conditions for meager pay and have to feed large families. But they have passionate ursari music that is tribal, almost primitive, always changing and continually emotive. On the flipside is a group of musicians and deejays who have been active on the Romanian and international scene for a number of years.
Shukar Collective is a Romanian act, an electro-dance band, a world-music idea, an audio-visual project, a mix of generations of musicians, a re-arranging of traditional Romanian and Rroma sounds, or an eclectic mixture of spoons, wooden barrels, violins, accordions, bass, roots vocals, samples, sequencers, loops, scratches, turntables and beats.
The collective idea was born on a very hot summer day in 2003 when DJ Vasile and Dan Handrabur AKA Dreamdoktor heard the original rroma songs of the Shukar original band. Immediately after, the musicians from these different generations met and decided to try and create a new project that have a new and contemporary sound. “We wanted to bring together rroma singers and a group of musicians and deejays to form and create a unique sound, the Shukar Collective sound” explain Dan Handrabur.
The final result was the debut album ‘Urban Gypsy’, released in the spring of 2005 on Riverboat / World Music Network in UK, which has been praised by the press from all over the world. It generated enough interest in the band for them to be invited to perform at various festivals: Trans Musicales Festival – France, Exit Festival – Serbia, BAM Festival – Spain, Sfinks Festival – Belgium to name a few, where audiences were thrilled by the unique blend of styles and cultures.
And now, to prove that “Urban Gipsy” was no flash in the pan, the Collective are back with their second effort called “Rromatek”. Whereas the previous album had taken shape in the studio, “Rromatek” captures the spirit of the band as it really is, with vocals being recorded in hotel rooms, backstage at concerts or during jams in buses. Production was sometimes shared by the musicians and at times each one worked solo. With the addition of a drummer and a horn player, a more organic sound is evident throughout the album without ever forgetting the electro spice-up. With “Rromatek”, continues to open up the new horizons of the idea they started exploring almost five years ago.
In the Autumn of 2009 HBO Romania decide to start the production of an Original Series Documentary production about the history behind a Romanian act called Shukar Collective. The result was “The Shukar Collective Project’ a music documentary that chronicles the ups and downs, the struggles and successes in the life of Shukar Collective, a Romanian music project that fuses ursari (gypsy music) with electronica producers and DJ’s. More about this rockumentary and teaser please check this page: http://www.tscp.ro/en/#proiect
SHUKAR COLLECTIVE ON STAGE:
- Sorinel: lead vocals, spoons, percussions
- Ema Dei: lead vocals, dancing
- Dan Handrabur: violin, keyboards, vocals
- DJ Vasile: turntables, sequencers, vocals
- DJ Rolf: keyboards, samples
- VJ Tom: projections, visuals, keyboards
SELECTED PRESS REVIEWS AND QUOTES:
“This ground-breaking Romanian trio sound like they must be in their fifties and sixties; guttural shouters who rant and roar over music devised by much younger producers raised on hip hop, drum ‘n’ bass and dub. The outcome is an unclassifiable hybrid that is often funny, frequently exciting and sometimes bewildering. Witness ‘The Wind’ or better still, ‘Gypsy Blooz’, which would have been more accurately titled ‘Gypsy Dub’. Ordinarily Shukar Collective play ursari – bear trainer music which utilizes wooden barrels and spoons. Thankfully, Urban Gypsy isn’t that ambitious, but it should travel far beyond Romania’s borders.” (Charlie Gillett, The Observer Music Monthly, UK)
“What can you say about a band whose lead vocalist has named two of his children Avenger and Billclinton? A band whose line-up includes a spoon player, a toy maker and a computer software designer? Shukar Collective combine traditional Romanian bear-baiting tunes with cutting-edge samples and beats. But this isn’t the usual cut-and-paste ‘global dance’ cash-in. The break-beats here have multiple fractures, and have been aligned to the core material of croaky vocals and barrel bashing, in order to produce an atmospheric as well as a bombastic journey into an unknown world.” (Howard Male, The Independent on Sunday, UK)
“The Romanian group Shukar Collective fuse a variety of contemporary urban influences such as hip-hop, drum ‘n’ base and dub with the bass, spoons, cimbaloms and violins associated with previous generations of gypsy village bands. Like African rap, the results bear only a tangential relationship to the American variety, although the guttural style long favoured by gypsy singers was tailor-made for hip-hop.” (Philip Olterman, The Times, UK)
“From flamenco to Hungarian café music, gypsy instrumentalists have been masters at making other people’s sounds their own. But ursari – the rowdy bear-tamer music of the north Romanian badlands – is perhaps closer to the music gypsies make for themselves in private. And it’s played not on guitars or fiddles, but on barrels and spoons, with bawled vocal accompaniment. Shukar Collective’s startling debut teams three noted ursari performers – the picturesquely named Napoleon, Tango and Clasic – with a posse of DJs and video artists from Bucharest. At its best, it coheres into something genuinely rich and strange – the earthy scat and jingling cutlery approximating a throbbing Balkan take on Jamaican raga, with half-cut laments backed by skittering drum and bass.” (Daily Telegraph, UK)
“In Romania, the past is closer at hand, and so three gypsy musicians who used to work with dancing bears have teamed up with half a dozen young DJs to form the Shukar Collective… Their bears are long gone – these days they sing, scat and rap like the seasoned street performers they are, accompanied by no more than spoons and a barrel… The younger guys, led by Bucharest studio whizzes Dan Handrabur and Cristian Stancliu, create dark-hued, sparse dance tracks, often foregrounding the stand-up bass of Vlaicu Golcea. Vocals are chopped and shuffled into rhythmic chants, spiced with a pinch of fiddle or cimbalom. Generally this works well. The racing delirium of ‘Shub’ and ‘Malademna’ is forcefully effective, though ‘Taraf’ is a leaden cut-up that never achieves lift-off… Urban Gypsy is an urban record, but the harsh past and rural reality are never far away.” (Clive Bell, The Wire, UK)
“Romanian Gypsy band the Shukar Collective use spoons and barrels along with the latest digital effects for their modern-day ursari, or ‘bear-handler’, music. It’s not so much genre breaking as a parallel universe, vibrating at the edge of an increasingly thin-sounding mainstream.” (Tim Cumming, The Independent, UK)
“The veteran members of the Shukar Collective performed on Romanian streets for years, usually with a declawed bear that was sure to attract passersby. They played Ursari music (literally ‘bear tamer’ music) using basic objects such as spoons and barrels. Fortunately for them (and world music fans), they met some local DJs who’ve teamed up with them to make songs such as ‘Gipsy Blooz’, a danceable number that sounds like a barroom blast of fun.” (San Francisco Chronicle, USA)
“Unique and totally thrilling” (Jason Ferguson, Orlando Weekly, USA)
“Highly recommended” (David Dacks, Exclaim!, CAN)
“With everybody out to find a new sound, it’s no wonder the Shukar Collective have become fixtures on the European festival circuit in less than a year.” (The Courier Mail, Australia)
“Now here’s something completely different! Vintage Romanian bear tamer (ursari) singers/chanters and some unusual percussive instruments like wooden barrels and spoons, welded to wild gypsy violin, electronica and hip hop and drum ‘n’ bass beats… The resultant sound is by no means as inaccessible as one might imagine… The Shukar Collective comprises three traditional ursari musicians and half a dozen collaborators, the latter component weaving a modern sound around the (sometimes primitive; often emotive) vocalising and tonal patterning and percussion playing of the core group… the Shukar Collective deserve plaudits for marrying folkloric pieces which date back to the Tartar and Mongolian invasion of Dacia (Romania’s ancestral name) with modern technology. By preserving the past – and the Collective certainly appear to have retained the spirit of the original – and propelling ursari music intro the future, Urban Gypsy must be considered a landmark album.” (Tony Hillier, Rhythms, Australia)
“Funny, nightmarish and funky, the Shukar Collective deliver a well-placed kick up the corduroys of the world music scene” (Tom Jackson, Play Music Magazine)
“Fine combination of ancient and modern here” (TimeOut Kansai, Japan)
“Shukar Collective founders Napoleon, Tamango, and Clasic create an intriguing mix of sounds and cultural influences on the collective’s latest CD, Urban Gypsy (Riverboat Records/World Music Network). Blending Romanian underground and Gypsy traditions with electronica, the group plays “ursari” music. The word means “bear tamer,” and the music is a percussive mix of the Romanian darabuka and the primitive sounds of spoons and wood barrels. The additional technological and vocal layers, however, take Urban Gypsy near an international trip-hop vein. The insistent, upbeat “Malademna” features sampled electronic and Middle Eastern sounds over the treated percussion. A mix of chanted singing and staggered vocal rhyming makes the piece both emotive and hypnotic.” (Jazziz)
SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY:
- (new album, early 2011)
- “Rromatek” (2007)
- “Urban Gipsy” (2005)
SELECTED VIDEOS:
SONGS:
Zona Libera (Radio Show) At Radio Guerrilla “Tamango Special Edition” by Shukar Collective
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