Herdeljezi Festival Balkan Romani Singing Workshop with Carol Silverman

Kitka is pleased to partner with Voice of Roma to co-present a very special Balkan Romani Singing Workshop with Carol Silverman as part of Voice of Roma's 23rd Annual Herdeljezi Festival at Ashkenaz Music and Dance Community Center in Berkeley.

Balkan Romani songs offer a wealth of modal, melodic, and rhythmic challenges. This workshop will focus on style, vocal production, pronunciation, ornamentation, and phrasing, with special emphasis on discovering your own interpretation. Carol Silverman will provide a great deal of cultural context for the songs, including historical information, performer biographies, and multiple versions of songs.Materials will be drawn from Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Romania, and Kosovo. Students will learn by ear, although some notation will be distributed. Singers of all levels, genders, ages, and backgrounds are welcome to participate.

Admission to this workshop is pay-what-you-can (suggested minimum donation $20), with no one turned away for lack of funds.

Please pre-register so we know how many people to plan for!For the full Voice of Roma 23rd Annual Herdeljezi Festival Schedule, visit: bit.ly/RomaFest

Carol Silverman has been involved with Balkan Romani music and culture for over forty years as a researcher, teacher, performer, and activist. An award-winning Professor Emerita of cultural anthropology and folklore at the University of Oregon, she focuses on the relationship between music/dance, politics, ritual, gender, and human rights among Balkan Roma in diaspora. Her 2012 book Romani Routes: Cultural Politics and Balkan Music in Diaspora (Oxford), won the book prize from the Society for Ethnomusicology, and her 2021 book Balkanology (Bloomsbury) traces the politics and artistry of Bulgarian wedding musicians. Her numerous articles analyze the globalization of “Gypsy” music, specifically its performance, consumption, and production in relation to issues of representation and appropriation. Carol serves on the Board of Directors of Voice of Roma and is curator for Balkan music for the digital RomArchive.eu. As a vocalist and teacher of Balkan music, she toured with the Yuri Yunakov Ensemble for over ten years and performed on several albums with the ensemble.

Host or Publisher Kitka Institute