MEET THE ARTIST SPECIAL: Marko Markovic from Serbia
Happy birthday, Marko!
Marko's birthday isn't technically until next year, when he'll be eight. But his family is taking it seriously and is letting him celebrate his 31st birthday in advance with 'the world's best rattle band'.
You've probably guessed it already. Marko Markovic - a world-class trumpeter with the Balkan beat in his blood - has a birthday on a day that only comes around every four years, namely Leap Year Day. This year's non-birthday is still celebrated in true gypsy fashion the day before, first in his childhood home and then in his own home.
Let's do one more thing later in the evening. After we've toasted with rakia at home with mom Lidija and dad Boban, and after three generations of Markovic have sung the birthday song. We've walked on in a group and followed Marko to the studio at home in his basement, and there the rest of the gang is waiting: his wife Sanja, relatives, friends, band members and angel children. They've gathered to celebrate the thoroughly likeable guy.
- Welcome!
BlackStarJournal, Førdefestivalen his satellite out in the world of folk music, is constantly and constantly on his way to musicians' homes to get to know them. This time we are in Vladicin Han in southern Serbia. Here the men in the Markovic family have been musicians for several generations. His father Boban played with Marko and a 13-piece orchestra in Førde in 2010, and this year the Marko Markovic Brass Band returns, by popular request from the audience.
Marko's studio is decorated with long tables, and the hosts are bringing in one plate after another of the most delicious food. It's a delightfully messy world of busy hands, smiling mouths, and insistent children's voices.
In the midst of the hustle and bustle, a little girl comes carrying a clarinet that is as long as her tiny body. She knows very well that the clarinet is not a toy. She holds it with her little fingers and concentrates hard. She blows so that her cheeks become even bigger and, if possible, even more irresistible, but not a single sound comes out. The attempt is nevertheless met with encouraging shouts: Bravo! Followed by knowing smiles among the adults who have put the mouthpiece away in a safe place.
The kids have many pairs of eyes on them. Older siblings, relatives and family friends are ready to prevent falls and smooth over disagreements. The kids swim around in a sea of guiding arms and pause-laps. Happy laughter and painful tears seamlessly blend into each other.
This is what gypsy family life is all about. They take care of each other. The Markovic family is generous with body language and caresses, and preferably everyone should have a say in the matter. It is an explosion of sounds and colors and movement, against a constant backdrop of music; a mix of Serbian songs from the speakers and tentative, easy-to-learn drum solos from the juniors in the recording room inside, muffled through the soundproof window.
That's before 'the world's best rattle band' takes over the party.
An attempt to describe Marko as a trumpeter might start with describing the annual brass festival Guca Festival in western Serbia. It's hard to fathom, but over the course of a small summer weekend, hundreds of thousands of people come to the town with a couple of thousand residents. It's Glastonbury-sized! In The Guardian newspaper, journalist and celebrity Garth Cartwright writes that the music is everywhere - in tents and bars and side streets - and that people dance to it in droves. He calls the Balkan beat 'tough, organic trance all night long'.
At this festival, father Boban Markovic has been honourably named 'first trumpet' and 'golden trumpet' and 'best orchestra' a total of something like six times. Marko does not compete, there is simply no competition, but he is warmly present at the festival. As a musician, Marko is constantly on the move. He has composed and sung on albums with the famous Polish singer Justyna Steczkowska, and he has composed the film score for the German film 'Für Immer'.
One last day of February in 2019, sandwiched between studio work in North Macedonia and a meeting in Germany, this great trumpet player decides to give a gift to Førdefestivalen -folket: an unplugged and videotaped home concert.
Picture it: A nearly complete Marko Markovic Brass Band - with full brass and drums - squeezes in around the long table. Seated and on full stomachs, they hit a few notes, before resolutely kicking off with a classic, up-tempo party song that makes the entire room lighten up a few millimeters, only to explode into sparkling smiles.
The evening continues with undertones of jazz in the direction of Dizzy Gillespie. Weeping, sorrowful blues. And approaches to drum and bass in collaboration with his son Bratislav on drums. At one point, Marko lays his heart on the table, and he and the rest of the band offer themselves in a sparklingly played and emotional love song.
- Usually it's the festival organizers we have to thank, but that people want us back, that's something very special, Marko says several times during the evening.
Marko let the trumpet sink as he has done so many times before. Since his early teens, he has played for thousands of people on stages around the world, but no matter how much he travels, he always returns to his roots as a fiddler at home with his own family. When there are private parties such as birthdays, weddings and funerals.
"Gypsy weddings last three days. It's hard work, you can imagine," they say, laughing.
Marko tells how his father has shaped him as a musician.
- Boban took me to gigs all over the world, to concerts and festivals, but also to private parties. He wanted me to understand that it's a job, and he wanted me to feel the weight of having that job. You have to understand, that weight. Whether the gig requires more or less energy, whether the stage is big or small, that's beside the point. It doesn't mean much to the "workhorse", says Marko, directly translated from Serbian, and continues:
- I still have to do my best to reach people and connect with them.
The town of Vladicin Han is located in the highlands of southern Serbia, some distance after the highway ends. There are just over 20,000 people living in the municipality, half of them in the city center, and the population is declining. Less than two thousand are registered as Gypsies, or 'Roma' as the statistics say.
We ask Marko and his family if they want to be called 'gypsy' or 'Roma'?
"We are gypsies," they say. Both in English and Serbian.
So then we also say gypsy. It's as comprehensive as Norwegian 'gypsies', and better than 'Roma', which they don't identify as.
On the map, Vladicin Han is located - with almost the same line of sight - with Kosovo to the west, Bulgaria to the east and North Macedonia to the south. The latter was renamed as late as last year, after the name dispute with Greece was resolved after 27 years.
This part of the world has a turbulent history. Invasions have swept back and forth across the Balkans, on the route between East and West. According to Wikipedia, Belgrade has been razed to the ground by more than thirty different armies, and today's Serbia has been incorporated into principalities, kingdoms and republics (in plural). Young people in their late 20s already have several different nationalities on their passports.
This is where the battles between the Ottoman Empire and various European states took place for several hundred years, and it is still evident in the cultural differences that exist today. The divide is between north and south.
The food can serve as an example. In the north, Balkan stews dominate, seasoned with chili and paprika. In the south, grilled meat is the specialty, seasoned with salt and pepper. The culinary arts of today's Austria and Hungary meet the Ottoman ones roughly in the middle. The flavors rub off on each other, but without overpowering what is distinctive. And that can be said about most things that concern social life, everything from the architecture to the general way of life. It is said that people are more outgoing and loud in the south.
On the dinner table at Marko and Sanja's house there is grilled chicken in all kinds of variations, pork and pork rind, traditional liver, sausages, sauerkraut and sliced tomatoes and cucumbers. For drinks we have beer and rakia sljivovica, a plum brandy, and the whole thing is rounded off with a chocolate cake decorated with a trumpet.
The long table is decorated with arrangements of spring onions and what looks like overgrown chili, but is actually sweet, hot paprika, an ingredient highly prized in Serbian cuisine. As a flower bud in a table arrangement, it is perfect. It bobs gracefully on its head between the crazy green onion leaves.
The atmosphere is naturally light, as it often is when you are surrounded by people who are reasonably confident in who they are.
So what is life like as a gypsy in Vladicin Han?
The question is a burning one. It is well known that gypsies are met with prejudice and ostracism in many places in the world, but the reality is of course much more nuanced. Repeating the same story over and over again makes it neither more nor less true.
- I have a good time here, and everyone is friendly, Marko answers and continues:
- There was a time when I thought about moving, and I have received invitations from countries like Sweden and Germany, but I have come to the conclusion that I would rather live in Serbia. Here I know how to live a good and safe life, says Marko.
- You might think that gypsies have problems in Serbia, but people are friendly here, says Robert, who often accompanies the band as a bodyguard on gigs in his homeland.
We also notice that people have a very special warmth. We have only good things to say about everyone we meet, from the exuberant Markovic family to the car mechanic who saves us on the highway and sends us off with a gift in return, two bottles of the finest rakia, cigarettes and chocolates in a shopping bag. We don't even want to say anything bad about the Mercedes driver who resorts to expanding his vocabulary in a parking lot in Novi Sad. We actually snatched the space right in front of his nose.
The Serbs are nice people. Quite simply.
Marko knows he's a good trumpet player and singer. But that alone isn't enough.
- Without the others in the band, I am nothing, no more than an inadequate cigar. They are the wings that make us fly.
Unity is the strength and pride of the gypsy family. They fly higher because they fly as a team. The other side of unity is of course the commitment, and that it can be demanding to fly your own way. Whoever has ideas and wants to be at the helm must balance between heart and reason.
- My music is Serbian gypsy music, that's my starting point. But I mix in hip hop, jazz, blues and more. I don't know what to call the music anymore. But it comes from the same place in my heart.