Finally it happened: Macedonia’s master brass musician landed on British shores and blew the loudest trumpet in the Balkans. Naat Veliov is a Romani Gypsy trumpet player and brass band leader from the small city of Kocani in Eastern Macedonia. Long celebrated as one of the finest musicians in the Balkans – and as leader of one of the region’s great brass bands - Naat won international acclaim in 1997 when his Kocani Orkestar released the album L’Orient Est Rouge on Belgium’s Crammed Discs. L’Orient Est Rouge – the title refers bizarrely enough to a Chinese pop song that was a hit in Tito’s Yugoslavia! – remains one of the great albums of Balkan Gypsy music and in the Top 5 of Balkan brass albums. Perhaps even at Number 1. Slip on L’ Orient Est Rouge and the music tumbles out, pumping tubas and scorching trumpets and wild zurna (the traditional oboe) solos while storming 7/8, 9/8 and 11/8 rhythms are beaten on tapan and darbuka. Some of the tunes are played fast, aimed at keeping wedding parties dancing, while others are stretched out, explored, allowing Naat to demonstrate just what a powerful, inventive trumpet player he is while conjuring up an ancient trance music of hypnotic power. Yet L’Orient was released almost a decade ago so why are Naat Veliov & – as they are now billed – The Original Kocani Orkestar finally landing on UK shores in 2006? The reasons involve music biz shenanigans and lots of unpleasantness, a tale that reflects on how badly things can go wrong when Western businessmen engage with Eastern musicians. But let’s first hear Naat’s tale.

“My grandfather Ahmed was born into a nomadic Roma family who roamed the Balkans. They settled in Kocani in 1913. I don’t know why they chose to stop travelling or what life was like when they were nomads as my grandfather didn’t tell me about the old ways when they lived in tents because he was very young when they chose to settle. His parents died while he was still a child so there was no one to tell him of the travelling.”

If Naat has little knowledge of the ancient ways he remains versed in Roma brass traditions: his family having always been musicians on the male side.

“When I was a child I had a strong desire to play the trumpet. I didn’t want to go to school and as soon as I was back from school I’d drop my bag and play trumpet straight away. My parents were afraid I’d get sick from playing trumpet all the time. Even in my sleep my fingers were playing trumpet. I began playing weddings as a child and from the age of thirteen or fourteen I was playing trumpet professionally. Because I was playing professionally I couldn’t finish the 8th grade in primary school. Because I was put a few times in the same grade I have a lot of schoolmates and now when I speak with them they’re managers, business men, and they tell me they don’t get to travel all over Europe like me. So I think I made the right decision of skipping school and concentrating on music.”

Kocani’s noted for being a stronghold of Turkish speaking Roma: some local Roma speak only Turkish, preferring to identify themselves as Turks and when I tried to speak to Naat in my limited Romani he didn’t understand me. Turkish and Macedonian were, he explained, his main languages alongside a grasp of Serbian and German (Naat tours Germany regularly). Keeping the Ottoman connection alive, Naat regularly plays in Istanbul.

“For many years in a row we have played New Year’s Eve in a club in Istanbul. They like everything about my Orkestar and are very surprised that I play the Turkish music with good technique. We have lots of our folklore from Turkey, that’s for sure. We use a lot of Turkish words in our slang. We speak Turkish Gypsy language as we are Muslims. In the eastern part of Macedonia people are speaking more Turkish than Romani. Remember, we had five hundred years of Turkish government here.”

Naat’s presence is unmistakable: unshaven, crop headed, bulging gut, scar face (his uncle once having attacked him with an axe!). His hooded eyes and cagey manner initially found me thinking (when I first met him in Kocani) that an interview with him may be a little, uh, difficult. Not at all; Naat’s disposition is laconic and, once talking, he rarely stops. Especially concerning the debacle that means there are now two Kocani Orkestars plying their trade on the world music market.

“The Belgians came to see me two or three times and then went to the French Cultural Centre and got the Orkestar visas for France. We went with them to France and played some concerts and they were satisfactory so we decided to make the CD.”

The Belgians are Stephane Karo and Michele Winter, impresarios behind Romanian Gypsy music legends Taraf de Haidouks. Having established the Taraf internationally they signed Naat to a management and recording deal (with Crammed Discs – home to Taraf), Karo and his co-producer Vincent Kenis recorded the magical L’Orient Est Rouge album in Skopje in 1997. The album received great reviews, tours were booked and Kocani Orkestar began to make a strong impression on the European world music circuit. At this time the brass music featured in Emir Kusturica’s films was gaining popularity yet both Romania’s Fanfare Ciocarlia and Serbia’s Boban Marcovic were yet to make any real impression in the West – Naat’s orkestar looked to be the first Balkan brass band to win a wide Western audience. With an established production/ management team behind them what could go wrong? Plenty.

“At the beginning everything was OK,” say Naat. “They treated me as a brother. Stephane stayed in my house for a month. Michele came to my daughter’s wedding. We had a close relationship. But after that the money gets less and less, payments later and later.”

The reality of the Brussels-Kocani divorce is many sided. To Michele Winter, “Naat was always demanding money and offered us cheap recordings for the next album which we had to refuse.” Naat claims he’s still owed considerable sums from previous tours. When Naat sold the recordings refused by Winter-Karo to a Turkish label the Belgians severed the connection. Yet three of Naat’s then ten-member orkestar chose to stick with Karo-Winter; Naat, it appears, never having been particularly equitable with wages. A new Kocani Orkestar was formed around the defectors and Naat was informed he couldn’t trade as Kocani Orkestar, Karo-Winter having registered as owners of the name for Benelux territories. Naat now goes out as King Naat Veliov & The Original Kocani Orkestar. This reminds me of The Drifters whose manager fired the original group one night and immediately replaced them with Ben E. King and co’. There’s now several outfits called The Drifters working the Oldies circuit, perhaps if the Balkan brass market keeps growing we can expect a plethora of Kocani Orkestars . . .

“I’m really angry because the Kocani Orkestar lived for more than fifty years – my grandfather founded it, then my father lead it and then I became the leader of it. Now I can’t use my family name because someone from Belgium stole the name. I still don’t know the reason why they took the name Kocani Orkestar.”

The messy split leaves Naat lacking the promotional and production muscle Karo-Winter-Kenis and Crammed Discs offer. He’s since released four albums – Cigance, Gypsy Mambo, Gypsy Follies, Live – through small German label Plane. And he has, in Vera Giese, a dedicated manager. But none of these albums can touch L’Orient Est Rouge in terms of colour, detail, mood and pure funky swing. What Karo and Kenis did was coax the best performances out of Naat and his orkestar and arrange them so they took on a tactile quality suitable for home listening; a difficult one for any Balkan Brass band, so gonzo is the nature of their musical performance. Naat’s self-produced albums are decent replications of the orkestar’s live performance and have their moments of eccentric inspiration – Balkan mambo! Drum machines! – but rarely demand repeated play. As for Karo-Winter’s current Kocani Orkestar, they remain a good live act yet their 2002 album Alone At My Wedding lacked convincing performances. Karo-Winter’s Kocani Orkestar still tour Belgium-Holland-France yet have not released any more material and, by all accounts, possess a fluid line-up. Hey, that’s the music biz!

“I’m talking with all of them (ex-members) except one, the saxophone player,” says Naat. “He’s the one responsible for the break with the Belgians, he’s two faced. He was telling me to ask for our money, rise the price we charge, and then telling the Belgians that he could be leader of Kocani Orkestar.”

Naat’s famously stubborn – his status as a virtuoso (“I took over the orkestar from my grandfather as a teenager. This was natural as I was the best musician”) and success in former-Yugoslavia meant he was well aware of his worth and probably a good deal less compliant than Taraf De Haidouks who were very much village musicians – although he now appears aware this hasn’t done him many favours: he’s currently looking for a Western recording deal and accepts that an outside producer will be required for future recordings.

Bosnia’s Dragi Sestic hired Naat to play on the Saban Bajramovic sessions he was producing in Mostar in 2005. Dragi describes Naat as being full of joy at the prospect of playing with old master Saban, his trumpet beautifully colouring sessions. Dragi admits he would love to produce a Naat album but the financial realities of running Snail Records means he must only concentrate on his Bosnian artists. Perhaps if another label are willing to sign Naat Dragi could be hired as producer? Now, that would be an album to savour! Naat got on so well with Saban that Saban hired him for his Paris and London dates in early 2006. Unfortunately, Naat’s failure to get a UK visa meant he missed playing at Saban’s shambolic Mean Fiddler date.

“Saban? He was one of the great singers of Yugoslavia,” says Naat, “and I enjoyed recording with him but he’s getting very old and kept forgetting the words to his songs. In Paris we played to a lot of people but Saban wanted to keep all the money for himself. So I won’t be playing with him again.”

Naat & the Original Kocani Orkestar’s first UK tour came about in part by me meeting him in Kocani: as musicians they live on the road yet no one had offered UK bookings. Knowing Dave Kelbie at Lejazzetal had done a fine job when touring Serbia’s Kal I made the connection with Kelbie and Kocani (via manager Vera). Thus the concert at The Islington Academy in October 2006 and, fortunately for all involved, it was a triumph. Naat now leads a seven piece orkestar that features both his 70-year old father Hikmet on tuba and his son Orhan on trumpet. The other band members are almost all veterans of the L’Orient sessions – several of them having played with Naat since childhood – and as you’d expect with seven musicians who collectively have centuries of experience making wedding parties dance between them they play a razor sharp set that involves wild brass explosions over hard, pumping rhythms. Some of the material dates back to L’Orient yet there’s also interpretations of contemporary Turkish, Romanian, Bulgarian and Macedonian tunes. Listening to Naat and other Orkestar members solo you can hear how Eastern this music remains, the lyricism and sharp, curling melodies speaking of the Ottoman Empire and the ancient journeys that carried the Romany people from India westwards. Naat’s a mighty powerful trumpet player and, on occasion, flavours his solos with Dixieland flourishes so reminding how popular jazz once was in Tito’s Yugoslavia.

Naat’s Orkestar played two steaming sets to a very appreciative audience, many of whom spoke with Balkan accents, and then band, friends and I retired to Gallipoli Bazaar, a fine Turkish restaurant in Islington. As delicacies were eaten and wine drunk – Balkan Muslims remain very relaxed about the interpretation of Sharia law – Naat and band appeared happy to finally be in the UK. I enquired as to how everyone I met in Kocani is: Orhan’s son Naat Jr is now eleven and, according to his proud dad, developing into a good trumpet player while Naat’s adult daughter, unmarried when I visited and thus offered to me as a bride, has now found a musician husband. Yet the economic crisis engulfing the southern Balkans means things appear extremely difficult back home.

“Being musicians we are fortunate to travel and earn euros,” says tapan player Redzaim Juseinov, “because there’s no work back home.”

All the musicians assert that the debacle resulting in two Kocani Orkestars has set them back years. But they now feel the Original Kocani Orkestar are finally being recognised as the real Kocani Orkestar and with Balkan brass now a hugely popular world music genre their time will come (although Naat’s unaware his Crammed recordings have been remixed on both Electric Gypsyland 1 & 2).

“I live to play music, to bring joy to the people,” says Naat. “Some tried to stop me doing this but that’s impossible.”

Thanks to Vera Giese, Dave Kelbie, Sebastian Merrick and Nick Nasev.
GARTH CARTWRIGHT

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