At first glance when you meet Georgi Dimitrov aka Chubry from Bulgaria, Yann Le Glaz of France and Stuart Dickson from Scotland the word “traveller” might come to your mind. Fate brings on one stage Georgi’s kanun, Yann’s saxophone and Stuart’s drums in the much-coveted music capital Istanbul. There they play together with Vassiliki Papageorgiou, a Greek singer and songwriter with roots in Asia Minor, and all of them together used the first edition of the BNR’s festival Etnofresh to visit Sofia.

Asked "which language they understand" they all respond smilingly, “the language of musicians" but they are also fluent in English, and explaining how they met, they all agree that basically people find each other through friends.

How did Chubry meet with his fellow band members?

Yann came to the Balkans because of its diverse musical wealth, of course. After completing his classical music education, he started looking for new sensations so when one heard a Bulgarian saxophonist play in Macedonia he decided to move to this country. But who was his private tutor in Parvomay?

How Chubry came across the kanun is in his words a "long history":

"In 2009, in the locality of Trite Chuchura in the Pirin Mountain, I met Michal and Julien from Israel and France, who are quite popular in Europe, they play ethno music (and Stuart was with them). They left for Istanbul and so did I. On the streets there the kanun is a common instrument and I loved it – it has a gentler sound and is easy to combine with vocals and other instruments.”

Asking Stuart Dickson on whose feet small bells are attached how he found himself in Istanbul, he responds that going to this cosmopolitan city was never part of his plans.

And how does a Greek woman from Asia Minor feel in present-day Turkey? More from Vassiliki Papageorgiou:

"I was born and grew up in Athens, but both my parents were refugees from Smyrna and I always thought of visiting those places. I liked eastern music and although I studied biology, I was in love with music and I started to learn to sing folk songs, for an entire summer I went to different fairs with Vagelis Sukas and then in 1993 I went to Istanbul with "Company Rebetika" because my roots were drawing me to that place and I felt it very strongly. I have been living there for 22 years now, I have a band which consists mainly of Greeks. I sing in Greek and in Turkish because many of the texts of these songs are mixed.”

The makam is perceived as a traditional form of music of the East, but it actually represents an ancient musical system of modes which penetrated almost the whole world with their minimal musical intervals able to express deep feelings, speak directly to the soul and heal it. The organizers of Ethnofresh hope that the Bulgarian audience will meet this traveling music with open senses, without prejudice, just as it used to listen in the past to the makams from the region of Yambol of celebrated Bulgarian folk singer Binka Dobreva and prepare for the next edition of the festival, when famous Ross Daly will visit Bulgaria.

English Rossitsa Petcova