In the 1990s, the world’s attention turned to the Balkans.
For a decade, war raged in Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo. The United States intervened militarily, mounted airlifts, and sent in peacekeeping forces. At precisely the same time, the sounds of Balkan brass bands were taking international concert stages and dance floors by storm. The films of Emir Kusturica, Goran Bregović’s film scores, the turbocharged horns of Fanfare Ciocărlia, DJ Shantel’s Bucovina Club, and the overheated gypsy funk of Balkan brass bands flooded the airwaves. “The sound of our trumpets is all we have,” say the Roma of the Balkans. “Who’s to say our cousins didn’t help invent jazz back in the day?”
The Balkan craze of the 1990s didn’t leave the international jazz scene untouched. American saxophonist Chris Speed, too, found his way to the Roma sounds of the Balkans. Although best known as a jazz saxophonist, Speed originally trained as a clarinetist. In search of new challenges for his instrument, he turned to the music of southeastern Europe, particularly the turbocharged clarinetists who dominate dance music and wedding repertoire in countries such as Bulgaria and North Macedonia. Speed was captivated by the breakneck tempos, asymmetrical rhythms, and idiosyncratic scales. His enthusiasm proved contagious. Among those he drew in was guitarist Brad Shepik, a childhood friend from Seattle who was already exploring exotic stringed instruments such as the Turkish saz. Together with drummer Jim Black and bassist Skúli Sverrisson, Speed and Shepik plunged into the adventure of Balkan jazz. All four musicians had previously played together in various duos and trios. Their new band was called Pachora.
They began by immersing themselves in authentic recordings from Bulgaria, Greece, and Turkey. “Wow, this is like jazz!” was Jim Black’s initial reaction. “These recordings reminded us of what we were doing in jazz ourselves, except that all the rhythms sounded wrong. These Bulgarian rhythms have an incredible amount of groove and momentum – a different way of experiencing time. At first, I couldn’t make sense of the melodies or the harmonic movement, either. But these musicians played a head, a big solo, and then the head again. So it was both very familiar and very foreign. We then tried to develop a deeper understanding of this music – its rhythms, its feel, its vibe. And rather than simply doing our best to play Bulgarian standards, we began writing our own music according to the same principles.”
Pachora released three albums in quick succession, in 1997, 1998, and 1999. Initially, the group worked with traditional Bulgarian tunes. But increasingly, they did what jazz musicians do best: They absorbed the music, made it their own, and developed a distinct musical language and approach to playing and expression from an unfamiliar idiom. Chris Speed described Pachora’s music as “modern jazz influenced by the Eastern European Roma, coming out of downtown New York.” The result was ecstatic, intricate, and dizzying.
Ást (Icelandic for “love”), the band’s third album, marked another major step forward. By this point, all four musicians were contributing compositions shaped by Pachora’s collective aesthetic. The themes grew more abstract, the stylistic palette more diverse, and the approaches to improvisation and the moods they evoked increasingly idiosyncratic.
The tonal centers became unpredictable. Brad Shepik put aside his guitar and played only saz and tambur. Jim Black had already pared his drum kit down to snare and bass drum, supplementing them with a goblet drum (dumbek) and small percussion. The speed and virtuosity of the faster pieces leave even bebop in the dust. “The meter is still asymmetrical, but the feel has become very familiar,” Black observed. The band even manages to recast a David Bowie song in its own unmistakable Pachora style.