Music
Zuros Banda
Jazz Bar, Edinburgh
Rob Adams
FOUR STARS
Edinburgh’s Balkan population turned out in enthusiastic hand-clapping and in more courageous cases, dancing mode on Sunday to welcome Hungarian sextet Zuros Banda. Currently touring to introduce their traditional music infused with rock and jazz sensibilities, the group gathers together music and metres from Serbia, Bulgaria, Bosnia and Macedonia as well as its native Hungary and plays it with a verve, musicality and intensity that will surely win it friends wherever it travels.
With Edinburgh’s resident Hungarian violinist, Jani Lang on board as both band member and emcee, and doing a double shift as his local folk group, Dallahan provided the support, we were given steers as to the songs and tunes derivations and although the songs were all in Hungarian, we got a more than fair idea of their content from the extraordinarily expressive singing of Branka Basits.
Those who remember the early Scottish visits by Zuros Banda’s fellow Hungarians Muzsikas will remember the impact also of their singer, Marta Sebestyen. Basits has similar qualities. Intense of voice, with a hugely becoming low vibrato, she radiates joy and relays sadness with a whole lot of soul and a vivacious stage presence, navigating often highly intricate time signatures and rhythmical melodies with nimble diction and a warm, engaging vocal tone.
When not singing she was to be found in front of the stage, joining the party that was going on as Lang and his countryman on accordion brought out the Middle Eastern flavour of Macedonian dance tunes and traded white lightning choruses over the certain but flexible guitar, bass guitar and drums rhythm team. Great stuff and remember that name: Branka Basits.
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