“Punk jazz” was the perfect term to describe Jaco Pastorius’s genre-bending efforts, but it could also characterize the aesthetic of Bulgaria’s Roma (Gypsy) musicians, who created music so provocative the country’s socialist government actually outlawed it in the ’70s and ’80s. Blending traditional melodies and rhythms with virtuosic solo improvisations, pioneers like clarinetist Ivo Papasov and alto saxophonist Yuri Yunakov defined the genre known as Bulgarian wedding music. On Together Again: Legends of Bulgarian Wedding Music, the two reunite after years of pursuing solo careers, enlisting Kalin Kirilov to serve double duty on bass and guitar on a disc that showcases one of the world’s most rhythmically dense and harmonically complex genres.
Primarily an accordionist, Kirilov went into sessions for Together Again with no intention of playing bass, laying down low end at the urging of producer Harold Hagopian, who owns and runs Traditional Crossroads. It’s a fact that’s truly remarkable, given the record’s stellar bass work, with Kirilov pulling off breakneck unison lines before slipping into support mode to underscore the soloists’ soaring explorations with tweaked-out chord substitutions and adventurous bass fills. The lesson here shows a page from Kalin’s book of tricks, taken from the third track of Together Again, “Filips Kyuchek.”
To start, you’ll need to get your head around the kyuchek rhythm, one of the most common dance rhythms in the Romani repertoire. Ex. 1 shows how you might adapt the basic pattern for drum kit; it’s traditionally played on the goblet-shaped darbuka. With these sorts of asymmetrical meters, I often use nonsense phrases to help internalize the rhythm, putting syllables on every subdivision and accenting each downbeat. In this case, you could try something like “funky meter, funky meter, funky meter, it’s a funky meter.” If, like me, you’re a big fan of Mexican cuisine, you might prefer “quesadilla, quesadilla, quesadilla, and some corn tortillas.” (Mmm … on second thought, maybe that’s a bit too distracting.) At any rate, repeat whichever mantra you choose until you can feel the strong and weak beats without thinking about them.
Now, on to the notes. In this style, melodies often fly by at absurd tempos, and the constant ornamentation applied to notes makes the melodic strains feel even denser. Though Kalin doesn’t match Ivo’s and Yuri’s mordents and other “horn-y” embellishments, I’ve notated the clarinet and sax melodies in treble clef for those fleet-fingered adventurers who want to attempt the fully ornamented versions. Ex. 2 shows three of the several dozen melodies in “Filips Kyuchek.” After four bars of unison playing, Kalin shifts gears to outline the chord changes using a walking-type line with sly, syncopated pickups like those in bars 5 and 6. Note that when the top melodies in bars 5 and 6 are repeated in bars 7 and 8, Kalin substitutes Am for F and Dm for G in bar 7 to flesh out the short two-bar melody on its repeat.
The unison line Kalin plays for the third melody at bar 9 illustrates one of the cooler modal inflections often found in Balkan music—that of the diminished 2nd. While the 2nd degree (B) of the minor mode used on this tune is usually natural, here it gets flattened when it appears in a descending melodic passage. It’s a feature shared with many modes in Near-Eastern and Indian classical genres.
If you want to dig deeper into this uniquely Balkan style of bass playing, pick up a copy of Together Again, or any of the older Ivo Papasov discs with Radi Kazakov on bass, Orpheus Ascending or Balkanology [both on Ryko/Hannibal]. And after ’shedding on these lines for a while, hopefully you’ll be a little more prepared for your next wedding gig—especially if it’s with a bunch of rippin’ Roma musicians.