Singing with the Fishes
Boban Markovic @ Joe's Pub, 9.27.04
Words & Pix by Derek Beres

As I enter the rehearsal room of the Public Theater, I feel like I’ve walked behind the scenes of the Sopranos set. Only cast members aren’t speaking an Italian strain of English, nor are they a cast at all; I’m surrounded by 10 rough-looking Serbians, a few cases of cigarettes and a bottle of gin. Front and center sits their Godfather, long curly black hair wild, stocky, accentuated frame compact and a dark glare emerging from well-worn eyes. It makes sense those same eyes has seen over 300,000 people screaming to the sound of his trumpet year after year at the world’s biggest Balkan music festival. Every time he performs he wins, and to his fellow Gypsies, he is the Godfather.

"I want to modernize the music and technology has made that possible," Boban Markovic tells me via manager/translator Bojan. "I’ve been influenced by music from the West and East, but it was really slow and it was incorporated over 10 or 20 years. Now it is going much faster, incorporating from various musics and trying to bring it to younger people, not to only play the old stuff. I’ve also adjusted the rhythms and pace of traditional repertoire to bring it up to speed."

Markovic’s adjustments have made him world famous as today’s greatest Balkan brass musician. He dominates the Central Serbian Guca Festival, not only due to his domineering physical presence (which he carries on stage), but by the sheer musicality of the backdrop of tuba, percussion, trumpets and even, at times, saxophone (one of his innovations). His name was circulated in the West after his music appeared in the movies Underground and Arizona Dream, and he has since taken this ceremonial gypsy music internationally. He has made successful fusion attempts, alongside Klezmer musician Frank London and Bucovina Club DJ Shantel, and even threw a Bollywood song on his last record, Boban I Marko, covering AR Rahman’s "Mere Yaara Dildara."

That album featured the debut of Boban’s 15-year old prodigal son, Marko, who joined his father on stage at Joe’s Pub. Coming from a long ancestral line of musicians, it was Boban’s father who actually pushed him into trumpet (he wanted to play football). It didn’t take long for his passion to unfold, and as he performed to the crowded club, the sheer intensity of blaring brass caused a chain reaction among fans. They would sway when the music dipped, slam their foots when sped and nod lovingly while chilled. The ability to devise such a range of emotion from a seemingly limited range of instrumentation is Markovic’s trademark. There’s little irony his European label is called Piranha – by his sheer being, this trumpeter is as dangerous as they come.