Ripe, bright and tasty as stuffed peppers, LA CHERGA create 21st Century electro-roots music with a pan-Balkanic consciousness. La Cherga consist of five musicians, all from former Yugoslavia. NEVENKO BUCAN, a Croat electronics wizard with a taste for dubbed out grooves, also fled the fiery nationalism that destroyed Tito’s Yugoslavia. Other members MUAMER GAZIBEGOVIC,NINO SKILJIC,KIRIL KUZMANOV and TRAJCE VELKOV come from Bosnia and Macedonia. LA CHERGA came together in Germany and Austria as these musicians began to feel out a new musical identity. LA CHERGA (named after a Balkan rag rug, appropriate for these musical recyclers) began weaving a sonic collage, inventing a Balkan internationalist music & manifesto: their sound drawing on the best of both East and West (skanking rhythms and sour horns/boiling dub versus Detroit techno). Bringing together Balkan brass, jazz vocals, Jamaican grooves and electronic beats might sound like a musical recipe for disaster but LA CHERGA rip up the rule book and demonstrate how to build musical and cultural bridges. Grab some friends, something good to drink and turn up the music: LA CHERGA create radical unity party music. …
Garth Carthwright
