BILL COPE - oud, gajda, tambura and accordion /
PAT MacSWYNEY - kaval, ney, frula, cornet & baglama / BRIAN FOX - tambura, guitar, electric baritone guitar / DAN AUVIL - tupan, darabuka & dajre
Influences
Rom Chalgia, Macedonian Izvorno, Ottoman Classical, Bulgarian Bitov, Greek Rebetika, Pece Atanasovski, Neyzen Nevfik, Burt Bacharach, Markos Vamvakaris, Ashik Veysel, Mott the Hoople, Ferus Mustafov, Mile Kolarov, Boris Karlov, Kani Karaca, Tanburi Cemel Bey, Vasil Bebelekov, Thelonius Monk, Angele Dimovski, Selim Sessler, Dragi Spasovski.....
Sounds Like
you fell asleep on the couch and dreamt your way into a cold, stormy night high in the windswept mountains of south eastern Europe during the final days of the Ottoman Empire. You spot a light in the distance and you make your way to the door of a ramshackle Mehana on the outskirts of a village somewhere along the trade routes that link the Adriatic with the Black Sea. You open the creaky wooden door and the warmth and aroma of kabobs grilling over a wood fire and the promise of fresh local wine, rakiya and good company entices you in. Once inside, an ethnic potpourri of Slavs, Turks, Albanians, Greeks, Sephardim, Vlachs, Roma and others eat, drink, debate & dance to the sounds of a group of travelling musicians. The revelers call for old favorites; tossing coins and pasting crumpled Ottoman Livre onto the perspiring foreheads of the musicians. You sit down on a worn wooden bench next to an old Yoruk shepherd methodically clicking the beads of his tespih in between sips of a suspiciously strong smelling liquid. You take off your fez, run your fingers through your hair; order a tall rakiya, kofte & shopska salata and settle in for a long evening of music, meze, drink & dance........good thing you fell asleep in your sneakers.
The MEHANATONES perform urban and village dance music from the Balkans & Anatolia. Like the working Chalgia orchestras of the last century, we perform a wide variety of dance tunes from the many ethnic groups living throughout these regions. Our sets include fasils; suites incorporating classical Ottoman and folk repertoire utilizing typical Ottoman Turkish instrumentation of ney, oud & dajre. You will also hear Slavic & Greek repertoire from the rural villages of Macedonia, Bulgaria & northern Greece performed on gajda, kaval, tambura & tupan. You may also experience urban Greek Rebetika performed on bouzouki & baglama as well as comparitively modern Rom (Gypsy) & Serbian dances performed on accordion, frula, darabuka & electric baritone guitar. ***
The MEHANATONES are: BILL COPE - oud, gajda, tambura, bouzouki & accordion / PAT MacSWYNEY - ney, kaval, frula, cornet & baglama; BRIAN FOX - tambura, guitar & electric baritone guitar / DAN AUVIL - tupan, darabuka & dajre & sometimes JERRY SUMMERS - tupan, darabuka & dajre ***
CONTACT: bill@thecopes.com / macswyney@aol.com
