Svitanya

Eastern European Women's Vocal Ensemble

A day with SVITANYA at LIBRA RADIO:
Thursday, 17. 11.2005

One hour show with SVITANYA
Thursday, 17. 11. 2005 at 23.00 (Central European Time)

Human vocal with its inevitable emotional component is the most perfect instrument one can imagine. Eastern European singing style has got a beautiful colouration, ornamentation, rhythm changes and song structures, such as unison, melody and drone, parallel harmony and polyphony. All this is extremely hard to put together into a form of perfection. When it is done, it becomes exceptionally seductive. That's why i see "Svitanya" as a rare jewel.

SVITANYA (svee-TAH-nya), which means “the light at sunrise” in Croatian and Ukrainian, is a women’s a cappella ensemble that specializes in music from Eastern Europe.

The songs they perform exude the spirit of traditional village music. Some songs are modern arrangements, some songs were learned from village source recordings, and all songs are sung in their original languages. Their repertoire is quite diverse ¾ ranging from strong and strident field-working songs to traditional dance tunes to lush and emotive arrangements ¾ and it all celebrates the timbres, rhythms, and harmonies indigenous to the region.

Most every song tells a story; some songs celebrate the mundane events of daily life, like cutting wheat in the fields or strolling in the street with musicians, and others depict life’s more poignant moments, such as losing a loved one to war or being married off while too young.

Svitanya is a nine-member, multi-generational ensemble that includes two mother-daughter pairs¾most fitting in a genre where songs have been passed through generations from mother to daughter.

"First light" includes 27 songs from Bulgaria, Ukraine, Russia, Poland, Croatia, Lithuania, Serbia, Macedonia, and Georgia. Most of the music is a cappella, with several tracks enhanced by the accompaniment of traditional instruments.
Some songs are modern arrangements, some are from village source recordings, and all songs are sung in their original languages.

SVITANYA is based in Philadelphia area adn has performed at music, dance and folk festivals, concerts, churches and other venues across the northeast.

Shantel // Bucovina

A day with SHANTEL / BUCOVINA CLUB on LIBRA RADIO:
Thursday, 10. 11.2005

One hour show with SHANTEL / BUCOVINA
Thursday, 10. 11. 2005 at 23.00 (Central European Time)


A new sound is here and presumably it is going to spread around the globe.

In our last review we presented Balkan Beat Box, a magical and colourful caleidoscope of different styles of music that rocks either on the stage or in the car.
From Essay Recordings we got news that they've got another fish to fry. Plus 2cd's as well.

Shantel // Bucovina Club 1 and 2

When Frankfurt-based Freestyle and Electronica DJ Stefan Hantel (Shantel) started churning up his eclectic Mix Beats from Brazil and North Africa with Brass Madness, Roma ballads and Balkan dances, dance addicts just couldn’t get enough. A trip to Bucovina, where his mother’s family originate, was a real ear-opener: What he had previously heard on records as an exotic sound from a faraway place was suddenly physically tangible: wild brass ensembles, singers with soulful voices, melancholy bluesy ballads and instrumental melodies, the frenzied dances of Kolo, Hora and Cocek (a Balkan variation on belly-dancing).


The cosmopolitan cultural and ethnic diversity of prewar Bucovina has been an important source of inspiration for Shantel. Czernovitz, the old capital of Bucovina, city of great poets and thinkers such as Rose Ausländer, Paul Celan and Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger, and famous musicians such as the German-Jewish tenor Josef Schmidt, the Caruso of the East, at the heart of the Bucovina region, was the home of his ancestors. Though the years of Nazi occupation, and later Stalinism, have irrevocably destroyed what was once a unique multicultural atmosphere, there is still an enormous interest here in nurturing those roots. By chance, a copy of the Bucovina Club CD managed to find its way to Bucovina. Musicians there were astonished to discover that a musician and DJ living so far away would draw upon these traditions. Eventually, in November 2004, there was a memorable homecoming.
At the invitation of the Mayor of Czernovitz, during the heady Ukrainian autumn of the Orange Revolution, Shantel performed with the Jewish Orchestra of Czernovitz and musicians of the Mahala Rai Banda on former Austria Square to a crowd of ten thousand young people, some of whom had brought along their orange banners. The musicians had prepared intensely for this event and saw it as an opportunity of continuing where the old traditions had left off. Further invitations followed, prompted by the mutual wish to revive this rich cultural experience. Shantel is currently planning a more in-depth collaboration with musicians from Czernovitz.
There is another inspiration that links Shantel’s previous life as an Electronica producer with the Gypsies. The Gypsies, with their seminal contribution to the music of the Balkans, actually invented the art of sampling. On their journeys through many lands and cultures, they adopted a hookline here, a rhythm there, picking up fragments of melodies and choruses along the way, and putting them together to create something entirely their own. Towards the end of the twentieth century, sampling became the production method of a very different scene: Electronica and Dancemusic.

Two years after the acclaimed and award-winning Bucovina Club Album (which won the most prestigious French music critics’ prize), Shantel has been inspired by the enthusiasm of audiences and critics to set his sights on surpassing his fantastic debut album. This time, the holistic approach of this artist-musician-producer and DJ comes across even more clearly. 5 of the 16 tracks are original recordings and 5 are exclusive mixes. Only 6 of them have ever been released anywhere else -- for the most part on rare and hard-to-find albums.
Take a look at his live video or the Tv story of Shantel.