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MAHALA BLUES 2 – Good Music, Good Culture, Good People ‘Oh,
city of gypsies! Who could see you and forget? City of musk and sorrow,
with your cinnamon towers.’ Suto Orizari translates as ‘the fields’. That’s the official name given to the world’s largest Roma community. Yet everyone, from those who live here to those who never venture near, calls it Shutka. ‘Shut’ in Macedonian is ‘garbage’ and ‘ka’ is a diminutive suffix. ‘Little garbage’. Some name. Some town. To get from central Skopje to Shutka you ride the Number 19 bus. No air-conditioning, hard seats, many stops, a slow, bruising journey. A journey in which you seemingly travel not only across the capital but from Europe to Asia. The No 19 begins on the outskirts of the Old City, crawls past Topaana’s surviving enclaves of pre-’63 houses, trawls amongst the tower blocks, rattles around the metropolis’s hazy outskirts before, finally, depositing riders in Shutka’s main street. You can cut the hour-plus journey to a quarter by taking a taxi for 300 dinar. But most of Shutka’s residents can’t afford such luxuries. Get on the bus. Shutka shares Skopje’s hot, dusty ambience. Only Shutka’s hotter and dustier. Indeed, descending the bus there’s so much dust I feel like I’ve arrived on the verge of a desert. Immediately surrounded by Gypsy pigmies - no, hold on, they’re kids, sooty and boiling with glee at having a new Gadje to play with – shouting “Photo!” “Photo!”, I start down the main street, hordes of ankle biters trailing my every move. There goes an inconspicuous entry . . . After Kocani’s tidy mahala I’m secretly pleased to be in Shutka, the eccentric energies here being very engaging. Shutka was assembled in a hurry after Skopje’s 1963 earthquake. Ironically, the majority of the Roma community in Skopje’s Topaana mahala didn’t find themselves homeless after the quake. But acts of God allow town planners to play at god: they rebuilt Skopje in sheets of concrete and shifted the Roma majority to the city’s outskirts, these crumbly fields, Suto Orizari. Shutka’s a marginalized mahala, sure, yet also the world’s largest mahala – 45,000 residents, a defiant city of Gypsies - and residents celebrate their existence with an infectious pride and joy. Some of the houses, built by those who have earned Deutsch-marks or dollars, are fabulous examples of Gypsy baroque, the names of the occupants engraved in marble or glass, wide staircases and big balconies. There are functional bungalows, solid and comfortable. And narrow, cramped houses, abode’s barely wider than a railway carriage. But the grotesque poverty found in Bulgarian, Serbian and Romanian mahalas is not readily seen in Shutka. “Shutka’s not a ghetto,” Elvis Huna told me, “it’s a happy place.” He’s right, Shutka’s glorious, a jerry-built, hand made, above board attempt at encapsulating dreams and the limits you can take them to. Colour? Let’s have some! Decoration? Crank it up! Hungry . . . people here are hungry. For possibilities, achievement, dreams. Imagination rules . . . think Dr Seuss, Gypsy Gaudis . . . for this is Roma wonderland. Give this community the funds blown by Blair on The Dome and Garcia Lorca’s city of musk and cinnamon towers (and much else) would arise to enthral the world. For these people possess no shortage of imagination: houses curve and curl, squat low and sit high, mix brick and concrete and mortar and tile and . . . what you can afford, what you can dream. Carved swans and lions are popular symbols above entrances – the former ‘cos they mate forever, the latter for courage – and rainbow hues recall Hindu temples. Having fled into side streets to escape my army of infant admirers I find mid-afternoon Shutka engaged in a siesta of sorts, market closed, few people about. Dogs relax in the sun, geese march around the yard, families sit on their porch, horses are tethered, Yugos rattle past. Popular pastimes include cultivating vines and racing pigeons. Beautiful children smile and say in a lazy, sing-song manner “foto” before sullen fathers whisk daughters inside. This is a land of slow dreams and easy, sensual affection. No wonder the best footage Kusturica has ever shot was in Shutka. I grew up in a post-war suburb, grid living, fields of box houses on tidy quarter acre sections running towards rugby grounds and golf courses and, inevitably, towards more and more houses. Many Yugoslav immigrants shared my West Auckland ‘burb, relieved at escaping a nation that had known so much grief across the first half of the 20th Century. Yet they surely missed things – cafes, markets, farm smells, local humour, weary blues, old buildings, the ruins of history, messy everyday stuff that knits a community’s soul. And the Gypsies. I bet, tucked up in their suburban comfort, hearing the sound of lawnmowers and sprinklers, radios and TVs, they missed the chatter and music and nuisance of the Gypsies. Subconsciously, damn, I know I did. Tick-tock: it hits 5pm and the streets erupt with people and music. Lorries unload equipment on to the main street and the reliable grind of a generator kicks off. The first wedding band of the evening play driving, clarinet-lead music similar to Juzni Kovaci, classic Gypsy grooves, an ora forms and swings across the street. Cars turn down side streets, familiar with musical roadblock, even the buses appear un-phased, adaptable. Summer’s here and it’s time for dancing in the street. Only members of the wedding party dance yet all are welcome to observe. And they do: the street’s heaving with people. Kids like the buzz. Teenagers check one another, and the wedding party’s fashions, out. Adults smile wearily, reflecting on their own day of betrothal and all that’s passed since. The singer wails in the hard, Arabic style favoured by Algerian rai stars. The drummer works his kit, building bubbling tabla rhythms on rot-o-toms. Local entrepreneurs arrive, selling popcorn, balloons, lollipops and toy guns. Young men with café latte complexions wear long shorts, football tops, goatees, blonde highlights, tattoos on shoulders and chests. Crazy beautiful. Those attending the wedding favour white suits and greased back hair. And the girls, the girls are dressed in Bollywood finery, a blaze of polyester and sequins, bright beautiful creatures, smiling and dancing and dancing and smiling, relaxed and engaged. Less than twenty metres further down the road another wedding band are starting up, smaller PA, but they get the cocek, the dance of the Roma, moving. The music’s good yet there is no applause. I clap after a beautifully ragged clarinet solo and all around glance at me as if I’m, well, retarded. Stupid Gadje! The band’s Turkish Arabesque flavour is quite removed from the classic Gypsy phrasing that underpins Esma’s music. Yet all Gypsy music shares an emotional intensity that convinces the listener something important is up. And, of course, it is: a wedding! What’s this? A small, awestruck boy dressed in an oversized suit stuffed with denars is standing on the back seat of a blood red VW bug that’s had the roof removed. He’s wearing a crown and carrying a sceptre. And the car is covered in streamers, glitter, flags. I assure you, this is a more magical scenario than anything in Harry Potter. The car rolls slowly forward, horn a honking, brass band follows pumping hot Balkan funk. The boy’s too young to get married so it must be a circumcision ceremony. Ouch! Circumcision being one of the Islamic rituals Macedonian Roma still employ while having dropped much of the religious baggage. Elvis Huna recalled his circumcision ceremony being, “very colourful and very painful.” The MC was Saban Bajramovic, a friend of his father. “I remember his big face full of gold teeth singing to me!” Another brass band approach, can hear the tuba, observe a merry crowd surrounding them. This lot walk fast, bouncing on heels as they come down a sloping street, not turning into the main street, instead heading straight towards a cluster of houses. Obviously an engagement celebration so they’re in more of a hurry than a wedding party. Shutka’s packed tight, there’s no empty space, thus the market offers solitary open ground. Divided between a covered area offering fruit, vegetables, meat, toys, clothing (Turkish copies of designer brands), shoes, pirate CDs (Gypsy turbo-folk singers, Mariah Carey, Snoop, Jay-Z) and an open area where anyone can sell anything: old shoes, broken electronic gear, children’s colouring books that are coloured in, used clothing and underwear . . . in Shutka if you are desperate enough to try selling junk you may find someone so tortured they buy it. As is custom across the Indian subcontinent rubbish is thrown onto the street, plastic bags creating raggedy blue and pink wastelands. Hens peck at the trash in the street and men walk their animals un-tethered - surly goats’ ransack food scraps before being ordered on. A shack boasting Internet Café turns out to have one computer. “Connection not so good,” says the youth behind the desk. There’s several shops selling food and drinks, a few bakeries and grilled meat stands but that mainstay of Balkan life, the bar/café, appears absent. A variety of Christian churches and a large, unfinished mosque are scattered across the town. Kemal introduces himself, states that he’s been living in Germany, is back in Shutka to see his mum. Please, he emphasises, don’t call me Roma. “Everyone in the world knows Gypsy – look at The Gipsy Kings, very famous band! But Roma, it doesn’t mean anything beyond Macedonia. Call me a Gypsy, thank you!” A passing hairdresser announces, “the women in Shutka are no good! Don’t trust them!” ‘though how he knows this when he’s obviously never touched anything but their hair I’ve no idea. “I’ve been to Paris,” he moans. “Cut hair in Paris!” And somehow he ended up back in Shutka where horse and carts still roar down the main street, dust cakes your hair and trash discolours your trainers. Shutka’s had occasional brushes with international fame: in 1981 Boney M’s Bobby Farrell married Jasmina, a Roma model from Shutka who he’d met in Vienna. The wedding was held in the open area normally occupied by the market and, across Yugoslavia, it was A Major Event. Time Of The Gypsies established the city as prime cinematic landscape. While the February/March 2001 issue of Benetton’s Colors magazine devoted the entire issue to Shutka, chronicling many characters and facts yet choosing to concentrate on what I call poverty chic. Y’ know, poor people staring at the camera with quotes to reinforce their estrangement. Shutka has many problems, agreed, yet it sparkles with energy, creativity, love.
“That’s so strange. Only a few of the old men do the geese fighting and I don’t know where or when they do it.” Sudahan’s 25 years old. He has a light aura, the bearing of a true gentle man, and the dark features of a Roma matinee idol. Every second winter he heads to Dusseldorf where he plays in a Roma restaurant/club which hosts “Miss Roma beauty competitions every Friday”. He’s hoping to give this up. Invited to play in Japan in early 2003, the Sars virus found band members refusing to fly. “I knew the virus wasn’t in Japan but they could not be reasoned with. It was very disappointing.” Sudahan doesn’t speak English yet turns out to be fluent in Swedish. When Macedonia looked to be following Kosovo into ethnic conflict he took his family to Sweden and stayed a year. A pleasant place, he says of Sweden, but Shutka is home. How would he describe Shutka to outsiders? “Unusual place, unusual people. Not ordinary. And not ordinary music. I don’t want to talk about the life here. People here only survive through music. If you walk around the neighbourhood all you may see is suffering. But in spring and summer we have maybe twenty weddings a day. People love weddings because they enjoy the music and live for it. That’s what keeps me here.” I ask about Kusterica filming Time Of The Gypsies in Shutka but Sudahan’s seemingly unaware of the film. Instead, he talks about Gipsy Magic, a 1997 comedy involving a Shutka resident’s daft attempts to raise funds to get to India. “The movie was shot here and the actors were the ordinary people because the Roma people are very talented they could act as well as professionals. In the end they weren’t paid but people were happy to be part of the movie. What was depicted in the movie wasn’t real life. Things don’t happen like this. The Roma were shown as rude and cruel and it means the Americans and Europeans, when they see this film, will think we will steal from them. I can’t guarantee for every Roma but the Roma in Shutka and Skopje are not like those in the movie. We have good music, good culture, good people. This can be seen in the weddings.” Sudahan recalls
being introduced to Charlie Chaplin’s son at a Gypsy Film Festival:
Chaplin’s mother Hannah is believed to have been an English Roma and
Charlie apparently enjoyed the company of Roma. “My grandfather played zurla (a large, deep toned oboe) in the Tanec Ensemble (the most celebrated folk ensemble in post-war Macedonia). My father played saxophone in the ancient style. He was in a brass band and taught me the basics when I was very young. I was thirteen years old when I had a big miracle and fell in love with the clarinet and turned professional and my life was changed. The clarinet offers me a lot and I consider it a part of myself. I practised a lot, a lot, a lot. Ten hours per day for the first three or four years. I’d sleep with it and be practising in my sleep (mimes hands moving while asleep). Next year I was burdened with my playing – all my friends had girlfriends and my father was saying ‘Sudahan’s clarinet is his girl’ and I ended up with a hernia. The specialist asked me what my work was and I said ‘clarinet’ and he warned me that I was practising too much, practising to the point where it was becoming a burden to my being. So I cut back.” I mention to Sudahan how Memphis bluesman Furry Lewis had a tune called When I Lay My Burden Down - Furry called his guitar his burden. He smiles knowingly. I add his clarinet playing reminds me of Jimi Hendrix, harsh but beautiful, intense yet lyrical. Sudahan nods but looks uncertain. OK, he’s unaware of Hendrix. “The clarinet can imitate the gaida (the traditional Balkan bagpipe) and the kaval (a slender long flute), the duduk (the Armenian oboe) and the supelka (a small Macedonian flute). Because of the big opportunity clarinet offered, that’s why I chose it. In Greece when you hear the clarinet sometimes you can’t tell if it’s clarinet, it sounds like all these different instruments.” Sudahan put together his current band aged fourteen, shaping them into Skopje’s No. 1 wedding band. The wedding season (June – September) always leaves him in a state of exhaustion. Making music, night after night, day after day, it’s hard work. The physical and mental effort, the emotional turbulence, that goes into creating such magical sounds is something I rarely consider. And your popularity? How did you become No 1 with no recording contract? No videos? “Each ten or twenty years there is a style that is modern in one place and starting this last three or four years the other musicians are imitating my style. It’s so new, even for me, very joyful, good for dancing, offers a lot of excitement for listeners.” We’re drinking water, chatting, all is easy. Then I wonder: has Shutka adapted to the large number of Kosovar Roma refugees arriving here? Sudahan thinks for a moment, stands and directs me to his van. We get in and start driving. Through narrow streets, past wedding parties on their way to the main street, past the big houses and the little houses, past gaggles of geese and surly goats, on to the outskirts of Shutka, an area I’m unfamiliar with. We stop by a grassy field. Surely one of the last remaining fields from when Suto Orizari was originally gifted to Skopje Roma. Correction, we stop by what was once a field and is now a shantytown. Across the field sprouts dwellings constructed out of scrap plywood. Polythene is used for the door entrances. Graffiti covers the exteriors. I’ve seen more sophisticated tree huts. “Here,” says Sudahan gesturing at what lies in front of us, “are the Kosovar Roma. It’s a very tragic situation because we have thousands of Kosovar Roma living in Shutka and they live in huts not suitable for human occupation. Some of the lighter skinned Roma went back to Kosovo and were murdered by the Albanians.” Well, what can I say? Start thinking of the Edwin Star song War. Not that we’re unaware of the answer to Edwin’s question. Sudahan asks if I’ve heard about a boat stuffed with refugees sinking in the Adriatic. Sure. If I’m remembering correctly it was in late-1999 and contained three dozen Roma fleeing Kosovo for Italy. Sudahan looks up as if trying to count the stars appearing in the sky. “A friend of mine’s brother was on that boat.” He ponders the tragedy. “Why are the Albanians so hard towards us?” I’m rarely lost for words but upon ethnic hatred I can only offer silence. We stand there, like men at a funeral. The muezzin from the local mosque starts wailing, calling the faithful to prayer. Snap out of it. What was the line in Hellraiser? ‘No tears. It’s such a waste of good suffering’. Hey, I say, what do you think of the music of Lumi and Cita? They’re Kosovar Roma singers whose raw, minimalist style has found them a cult following in Belgrade and Berlin. “They’re super,” says Sudahan brightening. “Really modern music. It’s in now, typical Roma. I want to record with them. I’ve practised the tallava style. I’m surprised you know it.” Tallava (literally “under the arm”) is the music of the Ashkali Roma, those forced to flee Kosovo only to be ignored by an indifferent world, dispossessed amongst the dispossessed. The Ashkali mix shrieking clarinets, elemental electro beats and a vocal style as harsh as that used by the leader of a camel train. How did this music, so un-European in flavour, evolve? Tallava’s 21st century blues, a sound created by a people so marginalized their music appears the only code they have to let the world know they survive. I want to talk about tallava to Sudahan but staring at the shantytown kills conversation. Less than sixty years ago these people were hiding from Nazis. Now the wretched combination of Milosevic, NATO and the Kosovo Liberation Army has made them again flee for their lives. Several months earlier eight hundred Kosovar Roma refuges, fed up with the abysmal conditions they were forced to endure in Shutka, set off for Greece. Greece, a nation actively intolerant of its Roma populace, showed no sympathy and refused to let them cross the border. The Roma refused to return to Shutka so set up camp. Esma provided blankets, food and medicine. Their spokesman noted, “NATO nations caused our problem and they should solve it.” NATO nations, predictably, did their usual see-hear-speak-no-evil. Sudahan, what do you know of the Roma people’s sufferings during World War 2? “My grandmother is eighty and so she tells me about this.” A friend of Sudahan’s, Seljo Kraguevac, has joined us. Quietly he adds, “when the war began the Romas were peaceful people but then the Germans began killing us so many joined the Partisans. This led the fascists to killing even more Roma. My father was a Partisan. Tito liked us Roma because he saw us fight so hard against the Germans.” Seljo tells me how Shutka has an equivalent to the RSA, a club where old Partisans gather to drink rakija and talk of the days when they were young and fought German, Bulgarian and Albanian fascists, heroes of mighty Yugoslavia. We return to Sudahan’s house, a tidy bungalow he shares with his parents, grandmother, sister, wife and two small children. While central Shutka is grungy, Che Guevara street is spotless, a testimony to the residents aspirations. Inside I’m seated and given an orange soft drink and coffee while Sudahan’s sister Perihan buzzes around, eavesdropping as Krisi filters questions. “How good’s your English?” I finally ask. “Oh, so so,” replies Perihan. “Better than so so,” I say and she giggles. Perihan’s honey coloured skin, luminous dark eyes, teased black hair and physical grace suggest she was born to wear a sari. I compliment her on this and she remarks, “Yes, I like everything from India. The fashion, the movies, the music.” Perihan then mentions she recently got engaged to a boy from Vienna. How did you meet him? “Oh, he came to visit Shutka in the summer. He is also a Witness.” “Is he Roma?” “Yes, Macedonian Roma.” “Well, good luck and I hope you enjoy life in Vienna.” “I will,” she says with supreme confidence. Do you play a musical instrument? “No, but I can sing.” “Why don’t you sing with your brother’s band? I’m sure they would appreciate a female singer to compliment Shadam.” “No,” she says firmly, still smiling. Sudahan interjects, “People don’t like singers. Look at Djansever, she is not married. And Esma also, she had to marry a musician she worked with.” Understood: Esma and Stevo trained dozens of young boys as musicians but, as far as I’m aware, not a single girl. Perhaps ‘neciste sili’, the unclean powers, even extends to the Roma community and their perception of music making. Which also raises the unspoken – at least to me – issue that Esma and Dzansever have never given birth. Admittedly, Esma gathered a vast number of “sons” but within Roma communities child rearing has always been the main focus of female energy. Perihan smiles and says nothing, Roma lore needing no explanation for Gadje. Shutel TV is on and the engagement of a young couple is celebrated. This consists of photos of the couple and their respective families overlaying various videos of popular Macedonian singers. Sudahan glances at the TV and announces, “they’re from Shutka. They’re getting married next summer. I’ve been booked to play at the wedding.” Shutel TV is one of Skopje’s two Roma TV channels. Shutel is owned by Nezdet Mustafa, a philosophy graduate who was Mayor of Shutka in the late 1990s and is now an MP and President of United Roma. What does Sudahan make of Nezdet? “I don’t talk about politics.” You mentioned Dzansever. Do you know her? “She is one of our best vocalists. I practise the same styles as she does. She can do Greek and Turkish styles, all Balkan styles, she’s got a great range and capability. She’s appreciated by the Turks and gets very well paid to sing at their weddings and restaurants. She’d like to do a Romani album but her contract specifies she must only sing in Turkish.” Hold on. Let me assimilate this information: you are friends with Dzansever? “Of course. We play together many times. My manager and her manager work together. She was here six weeks ago, on TV. If you are not on TV you don’t exist. She suffers from lumbago. When she tells me stories of her childhood I want to cry. But now, thanks to her gift of singing, she has everything.” Alright. I’m about to leave Macedonia and finally I’ve met someone who is friends with Dzansever. Where can I find her? “She lives in Germany now. I will see her when I go to Germany to play a wedding.” Germany. Hmmmmmm. Home to large Turkish and Yugoslav communities. The great Serb Gypsy singer Ljiljana Petrovic (nee Butler) also now lives in Germany. But out of bounds for my Balkan trek. So I find of Dzansever without finding Dzansever. Which is, I guess, appropriate, leaving her mythic status intact, an unattainable creature. Sudahan, I say, please send Dzansever my regards. “I
will, we spend a lot of time together. We get on very well and support one
another a lot. She says of Turkish musicians, ‘they’re very
good but academic,’” Sudahan pauses, a righteous man in a poor
town. “She says, ‘they don’t have your soul’.” Garth Cartwright |