How did it all start?

“I think my interest started back probably in the 1990s when I heard The Mystery of Bulgarian Voices choir on a college radio station when I was living in San Francisco. It was late at night and I think it was my first real exposure. I could not make sense of it but I really loved it. Probably about  the same time in the mid-1990s I saw the movies of Emir Kusturica and so many good melodies in that. I was not a musician at that time. First I started playing percussion and I was interested in Middle Eastern music, the rhythms of the Balkans, and African drumming but then at some point I wanted melody. I found an accordion at a garage sale. Then I quit my job and went freelance so I could practice the accordion. First I was mostly learning by myself and later I discovered the music workshops run by the Eastern European Folklife Center in California. Suddenly I was exposed to so many different instruments and styles – music from Bulgaria, Greece, Macedonia, Turkey, etc. That’s when I started really studying the styling and melodies of the Balkans.”

In 1999, Matthew made his first pilgrimage to the Balkans, going first to Greece and then on the train to Bulgaria landing at the Pirin Pee Festival in Blagoevgrad. And there it was – seeing a small wedding band of just a couple of musicians and impressed by the immediacy of the performance, Matthew went back home eager to perform in this genre. He is now member of Raya Brass Band, a solely instrumental group of only American-born musicians playing saxophone, trumpet, accordion, brass, tuba, yet all of them passionate about playing pan-Balkan - Serbian, Greek, Macedonian, Bulgarian, Albanian, Turkish, Gypsy melodies, starting with arrangements of well-known tunes and since recently writing their own music, as well. They have performed in New York, Chicago, New Orleans and the Bay area, saying there is a strong Balkan scene across the US.

What’s the reception of Balkan folk music in the US?

“In the 1960s and 1970s there was a lot of interest in America for international folk music. I think it was maybe due to the fact that it was sort of a forbidden fruit. The music was created behind the Iron Curtain and we were not supposed to listen to this music and to think about these people. And there were certain people, especially in colleges, who asked what is this culture and got interested in the music of the Balkans. A lot of our teachers in these workshops made trips in the 1970s, they came to former Yugoslavia, to Bulgaria. These were ethnomusicologists, dancers, people with a special interest. In New York in the 1970s you could go folk dancing every night of the week. Everyone was crazy for folk music. That trend died off in the 1980s and in the 1990s there was a worry through the workshops that there would not be enough people to support them. And then suddenly there was an influx of musicians who were suddenly very interested in this and the workshops started selling out", says Matthew.

One of the major events for Balkan folklore in the US is the Zlatne Uste Golden Festival held in Brooklyn, NYC, whose latest edition was held in mid-January, bringing together 65 bands and an impressive crowd of fans:

“The festival was started 30 years ago by some enthusiasts, mainly the people in the Zlatne Uste band, which was the first real American Balkan band in New York playing Serbian music and they have been going for 30 years. Maybe 100-200 people came and over time it grew and grew and grew. They changed different locations and now it takes place in the Grand Prospect hall in Brooklyn. Four stages are going on at once. You have Serbs, Macedonians, Albanians, Bulgarians and Americans, and we all mesh up in one grand room. The money is usually raised for a Balkan relief project as this year it would go to the flood relief.”

Matthew has already many Bulgarian friends in New York whom he met through the festival, including the 101 Kaba Gaidi group, the Young Bulgarian Voices of New York City choir, the Bosilek dance group, the Kabile orchestra. He is planning to come again to Bulgaria this year for the Koprivshtitsa Folklore Festival as the next step will be to bring here all the members of Raya Brass Band for a proper Balkan party on the Balkans.

You can hear the full interview with Matthew Fass in the audio file.