How did Talawa music infiltrate Albanians?

At the first hour of an Albanian wedding, most guests sit down with daily conversations. Few jumpers in the hall. The atmosphere looks formal and slow. Before long, formal talk breaks down and everyone moves their attention to the dance space, tracking it to the sound of a tag.

At over 20 weddings in Kosovo I witnessed this scene.

When I told some friends that I'm researching the tallavans, most people thought I'd walk into it. Others thought exactly the opposite was just the opposite that I would swear to the taggers. This scripture, however, explores the way people deny the qualities of the tagwa, and most of it became so popular.

One of the best-known musical styles in Kosovo, Talawa, was born by Roma and Ashkalinj communities in the Balkans during 1980-1990, and for a short time it also became known to Albanians. Today this style is at the same time experienced (seed) and despised by the Albanian public. While people dance with the sounds of the table at the wedding party, the joke is often overlooked and considered to be the style of the music.

Often the attitude can be heard that <x0dasms are cute without a tat”, which causes people to invade the dance space.

Some of the best known stupid songs are “Mihane” and “Pina Viski”, songs that are heard at many weddings. Even the tag includes dances such as the gaydia of Gjilan, the man and the neighbor.

Roma musician from Kosovo Bajram Kafu Kinoll says the status of the table in Albanian culture concerns racism as well as the tendency to make a clear demarcation between what is thought as part of Albanian culture and what is seen as coming from abroad.

Kafu Kinolli, Belgrade vocalist Gypsy Grove, says this report stems from discrimination against Roma, Ashkali and Egyptians from Kosovo Albanians.

The word <x0-tawa” in Albanian has received irreverent meaning, beyond description of a musical style.

Taking into account that the Roma, the Ashkali, and the Egyptians have mostly cultivated it and that they are in a crisis of presenting their culture... some people call talavana degradation. This is especially true today when the word <x1-talleva” is the degraded and dirty term for any kind of evil in Kosovo. It means that the Roma do this music and all that is cultivated by them is not ours, said Kafu Kinoll, referring to the irreverent term for Roma, Ashkali, and Egyptians in Albanian.

The word tagva has taken on negative meaning in Albanian, which goes beyond the musical style description. “Debat talleva” could refer to a disorderly conversation, talavaï refers to a dirty policy, and the big cytava is used to travel a big mess.

Astrit Stafai, professor and multi-instrumentist from Kosovo, says the Albanian public links the platewa with quarter-ton music, while Talava considers low-level music.

And when we're referring to the word tatva it immediately means the music of poor quality, music that doesn't have a level, which doesn't have criteria. Unfortunately, this term is being used for other things outside [tallva] music, which for me there is no logic and makes no sense”, Stafa told Life Gazette in Kosovo.

Michaela Minga, musicologist from the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and the Study of Arts, in her article on the Scriptures, describes the Albanians' relationship in the discrimination of the tagwa as a “love-hate”.

Referring to ethnomusicologists, Carol Silverman and Svanibor Pettan, Minga writes that the word tallava comes from the words “tel or vas”, from the Roma language, “under the hand”, which relates to the delicate movement of hands in women's dance called korcek.

Music style was played for the first time by Ashkali and Roma in the 1980s, likely in Kosovo or Macedonia. Since then it has been transformed into other parts of the Balkans. According to Kafu Kinoll, the table has passed through several stages of transformation.

The “first was defa music in which the audience was directly linked to the singer. He played at the cafe, not at the wedding”, said Kafu Kinoll. In the '80s, the tag was performed by women, with defas, and later the songs were popular with men.

Kafu Kinoll says that in his 90s, the zhani became more popular after the introduction of batteries, guitar bass, guitar, harmonica and clarinet.

“At this stage began playing at all Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian weddings. So that's where it was sung to the weddings, where the singer is listed and listed as to whom he will sing”, he said.

The joke is often confused with the turbofolk, mostly because both use similar instruments and on similar occasions. But music connoisseurs argue that the differences between these voices are enormous, since “turbo-folk is the hybrid of two popular music and pop”, as composer Lieburn Yupoli puts it.

“On the other hand, the table is more linear. A stupid song may be 10 minutes long, in homogenous harmony and may consist of a single musical interval”, he says.

Since it is impossible to determine where the tallawa started, musicologists assume it has spread in mass for the first time in Kosovo and Macedonia in the 80s and 90s.

According to Mingas, which refers to Slovenian musicologist Svanibor Pettan, the modern version took them away in the 80s when men began singing it in private environments before becoming popular in Kosovo and Macedonia in the 1990s.

Visar Munishi, popular culture researcher at the Department of Musicology at the Albanology Institute in Pristina, believes this style of music started in Macedonia and later came to Kosovo.

“Based on singers and bands cultivating this kind of music, the first to bring about this kind of music was a Roma from Peja, coming from Macedonia. While, it was singer Bekim Koumanova who made this voice known among the Albanian community”, Munich told JNK Journal.

Kafu Kinoll says that the taval is marked by the use of Improvisation and history story.

“Tallawa is a kind of music that consists of rhythm and harmony is marked by prolonged singing. In these songs, the lives of a person or a family, February and an Albanian, are being improvised for the living and the dead at the Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian parties and today's commitment to Albanians”, Kinoli says.

Critics, on the other hand, say the tallava does not “meet the” criteria for being a musical gargant due to lack of shape and excessive use of overexprovisation. And so does Staphay.

“Tallavan would not define it as a musical voice because the table does not meet the conditions, does not meet the criteria for being a musical voice. Why? The table is a current action by relying, for example, on a current family or personal event. The slogan has no musical form and no musical development, it simply has no sound concept of being a” musical style, Stafai says.

He says he views the way this music is played by Roma musicians as wonderful.

“As for instrumentists, if you listen to the Roma community players playing the Taliban is a miracle in themselves, they feel that music because it is part of their culture. While the opposite is on our side, we have a different style, we have a different lifestyle so that we cannot be at a level as proper as it is in the Roma community. It would be better if we left it to Roma musicians because it's their style and way of life”, he adds.

Eli Krasniqi, a cultural anthropologist, thinks the combination of cultures is the central aspect of music and society.

“Kulture is not static, it is consistently in terms of exchange (takes it) with people living or who are neighboring. But it is already difficult to limit because, in a musical aspect, with Internet massification, dice currents regularly circulate”, Krasniqi told Gazeta.

Krasniqi says thoughts about cultural borrowing and whether there should be clear divisions between Albanian and Roma culture in this case are often formed by racism.

“At this point, the rejection of the talava (out of individual tastes) with the idea that it is not Albanian, but it is Roma, reflects the racist attitude towards Roma. Perhaps this would not be the case if it were not for the conduct and attitude of opposition to Roma in everyday life. When describing something negative, those groups in the margin, whether racial or even gender, are used to describe a negative, she says, adding that even artists who play this musical style sometimes have racist attitudes.

There may also be some selection - the use of talawa for economic benefits, without changing their attitude towards Roma and their culture.

Kafu Kinoll agrees that racism has played a role in the development of talava by other Balkan peoples, saying the unknown origin of this style says something deeper about the people of the region and their lives. According to him, the ridicule includes the region's spiritual heritage.

I'd say it's the music created by the melos of the Balkans and the people who live on at”, he says.

This article was originally published in Pristina Insight.