Macedonia's Musical Buzz

Nenad Georgievski's Dispatches from the Beehive

“Writing about music is not just the documentation of sound or activities,” Skopje-based journalist, producer, and cultural historian Nenad Georgievski writes. “It is an exploration of creativity, community, and the ever-evolving dialogue between artist and audience.”

Press and Play: Reloaded, now available in English in e-book form, brings together nearly 300 pages of Georgievski’s reviews from the years 2004-2020, reflections on recordings, live appearances, concerts, festivals, and books. Spanning jazz, contemporary classical, soundtracks, and other hybrid forms, they are, as Oliver Josifovski of the band Ljubojna puts it,¹ the “musical letters that Nenad Geor­gievski has been sending throughout the world from our musical beehive.”

He proves a fluent and effervescent guide through the landscape of recent Macedonian music. We learn about “ever-evolving dialogues,” not only between artist and audience, as he says, but also between exuberant innovators and their deep heritage, and between the Macedonian and global music scenes. He also shares his takes on international artists (like Vijay Iyer) appearing at festivals in his country.

We’re in good hands. Georgievski, who writes in graceful, nuanced English, is a frequent contributor to leading jazz site All About Jazz and also writes Vintage Cafe, a fresh and broad-ranging Substack (see recent entries on David Bowie, Uri Caine, and the lyrics of Lou Reed). He describes Vintage Cafe as “celebrating the beauty of our world and the spirit of humanity through our shared love of travel, music, art, and literature.”

But back to Press and Play: Reloaded. A time capsule feel comes from reading dispatches from nearly 20 years ago marking milestones for some names more familiar in the US: Anastasia (who made the music for Before the Rain), Chalgia Sound System, Vlatko Stefanovski, Miroslav Tadic, and Teodosii Spasov. And then there is the chance to discover so many boundary-breaking collaborations, like that of jazz guitarist Toni Kitanovski with Romani brass band Cherkezi (follow the link for their take on Erik Satie).

Balkanography readers who, like me, know Macedonian music mostly through its rich folk traditions will find that Press and Play: Reloaded lends context to understanding the ongoing vitality of Macedonia’s unique hybrid culture. Georgievski celebrates the interweaving of traditional music into new compositions, showcasing soundtrack albums and other projects reaching deep into the past for inspiration in breaking new ground. He also appreciates and elucidates the work of artists with both feet planted firmly in the global jazz or classical scene.

Bringing to my mind Seth Rogovoy in relation to the American klezmer and broader cultural scene, Georgievski proves a genial, endlessly enthusiastic, and insightful witness. He reminds us that traditions are best honored not as museum mummies but as generative sources of cultural DNA for new expression. In a review of an album by Kaldrma (a forerunner to Chalgia Sound System) he writes,

“What is important when it comes to tradi­tional forms is to be able to translate and put that ancient language into modern frames and form, rather than relentless copying of what old masters have already done.”

For readers like me who love, study, and draw inspiration from Macedonia’s old musical and dance ways, Georgievski issues a winning invitation to learn more about all kinds of Macedonian music, the evolving “frames and forms” of living artists.

1. Ljubojna is one of the discoveries I owe to Nenad’s book. Check out their meditative version of Izlegu Da Se Rasheta featuring clarinetist Ismail Lumanovski and vocalist Vera Miloshevska.