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The Ethnokor group from Subotica was formed during 1996. Its nucleus was the folk-blues trio Captured in which Zoran Dukic played the guitar and sang, Robert Szabo played the banjo and Miroslav Jovancic the violin. They were joined by Arpad Bakos who sang and played several folk instruments. These musicians composed the firs songs of the group. Their different musical interest was combined in their music joining in an interactive relationship based on a quite different musical experience. While working on the first album Geza and Csaba Kucsera (saxophone and contrabass) and Stanko Patarcic (drums) joined the group. In 1997 a CD album The Barbarian Stories appeared containing mostly music from the Hungarian ethno-musical heritage and a few elements of the folk music of the former FRY.  In this album there was a modest tendency of playing the solo parts in a quite different way. This new treatment concerned the arrangement of some songs.Unfortunately,"The Barbarian Stories" did not have an adequate promotion, there were no concerts, so the group gave up work very soon. The chance for them to play again occurred in 2000, when they were invited to Szolnok, Hungary, to give a concert at the International Film of Fine Art Festival. The successful concert in Szolnok was followed by one in Subotica; the result was an offer for recording the second album. The director of the Festival in Szolnok, Istvan Demeter suggested this, so by the end of 2000 the group started with the preparations for the recording. During this period Brasko Csilla (a new vocal soloist) and Varga Attila, who plays a great number of woodwind instruments, join the Ethnokor. There are, of course, the old members of the group as well such as Zoran Djukic (acoustic guitar), Danijel Davcik (bass guitar, percussion instruments, acoustic guitar), Stanko Patarcic (drums), Miroslav Jovancic (violin, whistle, percussion instruments, bottles, noises, etc.). Due to some personal changes, the work on the recording lasted more than a year, after which the whole album was almost completed. The new CD was called "Between the Sun and the Moon". Between the first (the Sun) and the last song (the Moon) there is a totally new musical content of the Ethnokor. There is a tendency of improvising as an equal musical segment. It is followed by the composed, arranged parts of the songs creating a new kind of music which is characterized by the liberty of musical forms, fluency, the movability of expression, an inclination towards jazz and classical music. The authors arrange and adapt some standard, well-known songs (Dear Grgur, The Jay begins to Sing...). The flexibility, musical curiosity and spontaneity of some musical numbers (the Sun, the Moon, If Dawn knew...) deserve to be present on this CD. These compositions were recorded immediately without previous preparations and we were trying to preserve their spontaneity, give them a new meaning, leaving even the incorrect parts in the songs as equals to the other musical elements and tones. The album 'Between the Sun and the Moon' is the attempt of our communication with our time world we live in.
Now our group Ethnokor has two new members who contributed a great deal to the variety and quality of our music. They are Pasztor Csaba (violin) and Krizsak Viktor (contrabass) who are the students of the Secondary Music School in Subotica. [back] |