Macedonian Folk Songs Reinterpreted
The orignal tryptic of macedonian folks songs-reinterpreted is a rare example that the promise of croos cultural cooperation holds, and an opportunity to raise money for the Stoyan Christowe Endowment Fund, established to provide the means to young girls in Macedonia to pursue college education.
PARTINGS contains original Macedonian folk songs reinterpreted in modern arrangements for world audiences.
...Leaving their wives and youngsters behind and
seeking quick riches in the new land, they took off by
the hundreds, knowing that what they would earn in
America in a few years, would last them a lifetime
back home. Most of them would eventually return to
their families, with their life savings, but robbed of
their youth and now strangers to their already grown
children...
For thousands of men of Macedonia, this was reality. Partings contains musical interpretations by eleven amazing contemporary musicians from India, Wales, Germany, Norway , Ecuador, and the United States.
Many of these artists chose to include instruments from their native land, which melded the Macedonian musical culture into their own.
LILTS presents Macedonian folk music in modern arrangements.
She sits by the see and lulls her son... She calls out the son from Salonika to shine upon her new born so he grows big and strong. She dreams for her baby to become a hero who frees his homeland... She wants him to revenge his father who dies for the fatherland.
This title song not only preserves the oral history of the land but also records the geography of its musical origin. The unassuming lyrics of these lullabies and the original melodies were recorded acapella
in Macedonian villages. They have been the basis for the new arrangements which combine lyrics in Macedonian and the native language of the arranger. The collaborators for this album come from Italy, Sardinia,
the United Kingdom, France, Sweden, the United States and Japan.
IN DISTRESS pays homage to Macedonian women throughout the centuries.
...she had been born during the
calamitous end of Turkish maladministration... then in her maturity had come the Balkan
wars and the Great War with cholera and typhus epidemic... she has had far
less of anything, of personal possessions, of security, of care of childbirth than any
western woman can imagine... but she had two possessions which any western woman
might envy... strength, the terrible stony strength of Macedonia...
In this album, we will hear the lament of a 22-year-old maid, empathize when she is abused by her alcoholic husband, cry when she loses her husband to tuberculosis, and laugh when she loses her handkerchief
and can’t get it back without kissing the young man who found it.