Ladies and gentlemen, we are proud to present the BGKO’s irst Balkan Reunion. It has been a while since our irst album Imbarca was published and since then we have constantly been on tour. We were just about to record our second album, preparing material, rehearsing night and day, when a diferent idea occurred. We realised how many great musicians and friends we got to know on tour, people that have been playing their own music for their whole lives. They would often join to play with us, no matter in which country we were. Playing the untold stories, stories of reuniting, reuniting after a life time, although they would just got to know us the same day. It occurred to us that music is one of the miracles that brings people together, people of diferent ages, religions, nationalities or social groups.

So, we decided to wait for a bit with our second album and to dedicate ourselves to something unique, inviting musicians we met on tour to play as soloists in our group. Some of them have been performing their music for more than 50 years, and we never actually expected to play with musicians we used to listen in our childhood. That way, our dreams slowly became true, and the adventure of our irst Balkan Reunion started when the living legends came to record with us in Barcelona and perform at the sold-out Apolo concert hall during the same week.

So, lets start with the lady, the only one our age, but seems to have been singing her music for many lives. Nihan Devecioglu is a classically educated soprano, coming from Turkey and afterwords studying and performing at Mozarteum University in Salzburg. Besides Turkish ethnic music, she has been performing as an avant-garde jazz musician, playing with such musicians as Bobby McFerrin and Chick Corea. We performed so many times together and she still keeps inspiring us as much as if it would be the irst time. Ferus Mustafov is the king of saxophone in Balkan music, and thanks to that he is often presented as King Ferus. He has been a pioneer, one of the irst musicians ever to start playing Balkan and Roma music on sax. Next to Esma, he is one of the greatest promoters of Romani culture, not only in Macedonia his home country, but also in the whole world. No need to mention his exact age, let’s just say that he was already a star in the the time when our parents were young. And You will be surprised with the freshness and vigour that still sparkles in his music.

Vlado Kreslin is a real poet of Gipsy music. He comes from Slovenia, from a village close to Hungarian border, a place where Roma people used to be more integrated in society. Since his youth he was attracted to Romani culture, back in the time when it was not that popular as it is today. Today, he has so many stories to tell, songs of his own, stories of such great mystery and passion that we couldn’t resist inviting him to sing with us. He chose to record some of the songs that described his lifetime, as well as some of the old forgotten songs of Romani culture that felt very important to us. And we couldn’t imagine someone more appropriate to do it. This album is dedicated to them and to their passion to share their music with us, the young-ones.