www.batotheyugo.comBato The Yugo Ups the Anteby Jen ChapinMarch 2008It is the late 1970’s, in a factory town in the mountains of Tito’s Yugoslavia, and a young boy slowly wanders the streets near his home along which he has kicked a soccer ball on so many afternoons. It is evening now, and there is no soccer ball, just the concentration on his face and the friendly voices of neighbors whose chatter falls on distracted ears. The boy is listening for something, something mystical and sweet and strange. From nearby, Orthodox church bells ring out, then soon after from the mosque down the street, the town imam’s call to prayer. The boy moves a little this way, a few steps that way, then stops, transfixed. He has found it that magical place where the two waves of sound balance perfectly and ring out harmonious and true.The boy is Branislav Andonov aka Bato the Yugo, and he is still seeking that harmony and truth, both in the fervent lyricism of his guitar playing and the bold strokes of his painting. Born of mixed (Macedonian/Albanian/Romani Serbian) blood, raised in proud traditions of art and rebellion, then cast into adulthood as his country dissolved, Bato makes music and art that expands minds and crosses borders.Bato was born in 1971 in the town of Priboj na Limu, in the Sandzak region that touches Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo and Bosnia. His mother was a nurse and his father was a musician and painter, though a teenaged bout with tuberculosis crippled the father’s trumpet playing and pushed him toward work as a clerk. Yet the seeds of an artist’s life were everywhere in the constant flow of people who came to the home to discuss Velasquez, Rembrandt, and Picasso, in the albums by Django Reinhart and Jimi Hendrix and various jazz and Indian classical artists on the turntable, in the frescoed stone walls of the nearby 14th century monastery that had survived centuries of invasion, and in the idealism of life in an ethnically mixed town that lived Tito’s dream of the Yugoslav utopia.Bato’s parents had met in a Yugoslav youth work camp and soon formed a tight nuclear family that operated as its own creative democracy. When his older sister drew the winning straw and the privilege of picking the new baby’s name, she chose the masculine version of her own Branislava  and so it was. “Glory is defended†is the translation, and the name evokes the legacy of maternal grandparents who risked their lives as young partisan fighters against the Nazi occupation. Art, music, family, sports, country were important religion and ethnicity were not. The family took vacations to the mountains and the sea, the country was peaceful and still in the euphoria of the post-war years, and life was good.Bato’s first toy was the guitar that his father bought him before he was born, and the toddler started playing the instrument at age 2, going on to perform a large repertoire of gypsy songs at weddings by 9. From age 6 to 14, he studied classical piano. He started painting at four, adding to the attention and nurturing he received from townspeople as a wunderkind. For high school, Bato went on to study at the school for Arts and Industrial Design in Belgrade. But by then the wind was shifting, and Bato was drafted into the army and, given his formidable athletic and leadership skills, assigned to the elite special forces which were soon to become a deadly force in the disintegrating nation’s politics. Prescient friends arranged admission to Berklee College of Music in Boston, and somehow he was granted a visa and 30 day “leave of absence†from the army to leave the country.It was January of 1991 when Bato arrived at Logan Airport in Boston, with $80 and such limited English that he was unable to reach the school, spending all his cash on that first night’s hotel room. The next months were a blur of living in a strange culture, language and city while playing as much guitar as he could, and by the summer Bato was living on the streets of Boston, his formal studies ended and a true fight for survival and self-determination just begun. Some how he made his way out to Los Angeles, where he stayed with family friends and worked in a factory that manufactured submarine parts, before returning to Boston.In the 17 years since arriving in the United State, Bato has survived and defied the pressures of politics end economics that would have him give up his belief in himself, his ideals, and his art. He has worked as a house painter, factory worker, landscaper, janitor and bouncer, yet he is known and respected by some of the most innovative and powerful forces in progressive music as a creative force without peer. Among the jazz giants Bato the Yugo has worked with are Paul Motian, Steve Swallow, George Garzone, Eddie Henderson, Bob Moses, and Rick Peckham. Of the genre-crossing artists on the NYC and international jazz, Balkan, and alternative scenes Bato has made music with are Meshell Ndegeocello, Abe Laboriel Jr., Brazilian Girls, Matt Garrison, Kino, Marko Djordjevic, Saban Bajramovic, Antonia Bennett, Candido Camero, Chris Cheek, Holly Palmer, Yusuke Yamamoto, Kumar Das, Vasil Hadzimanov, Kenny Wolleson, Dan Rieser, DJ Hardedge, Clarck Gayton, Village Drums of Freedom, Ana Bekuta, Meho Puzic, Juini Booth, Butch Morris and myself, Jen Chapin.His bandleading, singing, composing and guitar-playing with his groups “Sir Bato the Yugo’s Gypsy Boogie†and “Bato the Yugo & The Undercover Manyyacs†have earned cult followings and critical praise from outlets like Time Out New York, which called his work “wildly ambitious.†When I was in my first semester at Berklee and still struggling to find my own voice as a singer and composer among all the slick and packaged performances there, I first heard Bato’s guitar and realized there was another way to make music music of the moment that is timeless; music that is built on years of practice that is spontaneous; and music that is authentic and true. Of course, I am not the only one who has been affected. Today, Bato the Yugo is just hitting his stride as an artist, and is an inspiration and touchstone to both established and aspiring musicians alike.
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