Kafana Balkan’s 10 year Anniversary Party!!

Featuring:

Inspector Gadje and Ismail Lumanovski

Two years into their cross cultural and continental collaboration, Inspector Gadje and Ismail Lumanovski are set to release their first CD together. There’s been a buzz from the start for this pairing, which consistently draws sold out crowds for all-night sweat soaked dance parties propelled by high energy, soaring, funky, dirty, ecstatic brass. Now those sounds, energy, excitement, sweat, drama, love and emotion can in some way make it out of the live dance party and into the party anywhere with a sound system. 

Lumanovski performs internationally and leads the New York Gypsy Allstars, is perhaps the first Roma clarinet player to graduate from the Juilliard School of Music in New York. His mastery of Western classical and Eastern folk music have elevated both musics to new heights, and indeed to new octaves in the clarinet. The New York Times described him as a"...brilliant, fearless young clarinetist..." and Time Out New York remarked that he’s "A showboat of a performer . . . an adventurous, modern-minded front man."

Fourteen piece (eleven horns, an accordion, and two drummers) Balkan brass band Inspector Gadje has been described by the SF Chronicle as an “instant party atmosphere.” Inspector Gadje has been delighting audiences in San Francisco and beyond since 2010 when the band began through a collaboration with Voice of Roma, a non-profit that supports Romani cultural causes world-wide.

While Lumanovski and Inspector Gadje each stand tall as performers in their own right, together they have a certain synergy and magic that take their music to new heights. Tight and adventurous arrangements, grooves that get under the skin and into the feet, and epic solos come together for music that touches the heart, stirs the soul, and moves the body.

http://www.inspectorgadje.com/

http://www.ismaillumanovski.com/

Elizabeth Strong

Elizabeth Strong is a life long dancer, raised in the folk communities of California, where she was exposed to music and dance of the Balkans and Middle East from a young age. In addition to over a decade of study in the Bay Area, She has traveled and studied dance ethnology in Turkey and Egypt, the first student of Reyhan Tuzsuz in Istanbul, and student of Sahra Saeeda in Egyptian dance and culture.

http://strongdancer.com/

DJ Zeljko

Spinning the funnest Roma music around!