2 wks ago I had an amazing weekend in Bratislava thanks to my friend, Rado Bonk, a Slovakian who acted as my guide. The main objective was to go to a festival of traditional Carpathian dancing and music.
Rado was most interested in the dance and I was most interested in learning from the musicians. The most amazing part for me was watching an incredible gypsy band play.
Click here to watch them. Stick around till the end of the movie and watch the bass player. (If anyone has any tips on how to put this kind of AVI on the web without paying money for software but still in some sort of compressed and common format, please let me know). I’ve never seen anything quite like it. It sounds a bit messy in the recording but when you were there it didn’t sound messy at all.
The band is called something like Sugo, which is the name of the older guy. The older guy is the father of the bass player and the leftmost violin player. The guy next to the bass player is playing viola. 2 of them are playing with a string which I gave them (my claim to fame).
It was also a new experience to sleep what remained of the night (we got back at 3.45 am and left at 6.45) in a genuine ex-communist appartment block, which Rado had the keys to.