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By Yuriy Gurzhy

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YuroSalon

Sometimes, the stories behind music are as fascinating as the music itself. The musician and bi'bakaudio curator Yuriy Gurzhy invites DJs, musicians, producers and music critics to his YuroSalon. The guests share their own stories and focus on the metamorphosis of traditional music genres, the challenges that musicians with a migrant background face in their adopted lands, as well as the emergence of new hybrid styles developed in the diaspora.

Funded by Federal Office for Political Communication in Berlin.

Yuriy Gurzhy is a musician, songwriter, DJ and producer, known for his work with the groups RotFront, Shtetl Superstars and The Disorientalists as well as his party series Russendisko, Born in UA and Disko Kosmopolit. He was born in Ukraine and now lives in Berlin.

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Films

frontend.im_anschluss_x. Robert Šoko and Yuriy Gurzhy

ROBERT ŠOKO / BALKAN BEATS

Curator Yuriy Gurzhy and DJ Robert Šoko talk about Balkan beat music as a phenomenon of Balkan diaspora in Germany and about the music which is actually produced in the Balkan countries. How do musical influences move across borders? Can Balkan Beats be described as "made in Germany”? How is this popular phenomenon perceived in the Balkan countries? How has this Balkan Beats hype influenced the current local music scene there? In our discussion, Robert Šoko will share the story and the secret behind the worldwide success of this multicultural musical movement.

Robert Šoko, born in Bosnia and currently living in Berlin, started his parties in the German capital in 1993. He coined the term "BalkanBeats" and offered iconic compilations and albums, which are still today a blue print to any Balkan party. It took off, and by 2009, he had introduced his style and established regular BalkanBeats events in London, Paris and Budapest. Since then he started BalkanBeats parties in Mexico City & Tokyo and continues touring the world to spin this music. 

Yuriy Gurzhy is a musician, songwriter, DJ and producer, known for his work with the groups RotFront, Shtetl Superstars and The Disorientalists as well as his party series Russendisko, Born in UA and Disko Kosmopolit. He was born in Ukraine and now lives in Berlin.

URBAN FUTURIST SOUNDS FROM THE MIDDLE EAST TO NORTH AFRICA

frontend.im_anschluss_x. Roi “Rocky B” Assayag and Yuriy Gurzhy

TROPICAL CAMEL

bi’bakaudio #08 highlights the issues of migration and identity, questioning the boundaries and similarities between Israeli, Middle Eastern and North African music scenes.

Contemporary music from Israel struggles with identity, definition and acceptance, as artists draw on diverse roots from Mizrahim (Arab Jewish) heritage and attempt to carve out common spaces within the divided society. How can transcultural music exist in such a context? How do Israeli/Jews produce music and integrate themselves into the Arabic/Middle Eastern music sphere? Curator Yuriy Gurzhy and Rocky B aka Tropikal Camel open up a discussion on these conflict-laden, cross-cultural issues. The discussion will be brough to life with pieces of music. 

Roi “Rocky B” Assayag moved from Jerusalem to Berlin in 2013, where he currently lives and works. Having released 13 albums in broad range of diverse music genres, in each album and project he redefines his musical vision and continues to develop an original artistic language as a producer and as an MC. In 2015 Rocky B released four albums with four different labels: Folcore, Generation Bass, Shouka and Das Andere Selbst. Rocky B is a member of the Arabstzy collective.

Yuriy Gurzhy is a musician, songwriter, DJ and producer, known for his work with the groups RotFront, Shtetl Superstars and The Disorientalists as well as his party series Russendisko, Born in UA and Disko Kosmopolit. He was born in Ukraine and now lives in Berlin.

CENTRAL-ASIAN MUSIC IN EUROPE

frontend.im_anschluss_x. Mario Pschera

MARIO PSCHERA

Nowadays, as music journalism has been reduced to copy-pasting from the record labels, Mario Pschera's writings on musical themes are a refreshing change. Pschera – a journalist (for Neues Deutschland, among others), a publisher (Dagyeli Verlag) and a musician (Tschiltan band) – reports on his adventures and experiences as a border-crosser, a pioneer and populariser of Central-Asian music in Europe. 

Together with Yurosalon's curator Yuriy Gurzhy, Pschera discusses the metamorphoses of traditional musical genres, his challenges and experiences as an artist who has brought Kyrgyz, Tajik, and Kazakh music closer to the European public, to an audience that is perhaps unfamiliar with it, and about performing alongside musicians from the countries mentioned above in Berlin as well as in Central Asia.

Mario Pschera, born in 1968 in East Germany, is founder of the publishing house Dagyeli which specializes in Turkish, Central Asian and Caucasian literature. Besides various jobs as a translator, illustrator and feature writer, he also works in marketing for a Berlin newspaper and has been singing in the Berlin Central Asian folk band Tschiltan since 2009.

frontend.im_anschluss_x. Yuriy Gurzhy

THE DISORIENTALISTS

The Disorientalists first started their ludicrous mix of Cabaret, Klezmer, Oriental Swing, Ragtime and Raggae two years ago at Studio Я at Maxim-Gorki-Theatre in Berlin. With their program Who Was Essad Bey? the songwriters Yuriy Gurzhy and Daniel Kahn together with singer Marina Frenk present the life-story of German writer Essad Bey. He was born in 1905 in Azerbaijan as Levin Nussimbaum, converted to Islam 17 years later, changed his name to Essad Bey and wrote a few bestsellers before the war. His mother was friends with Stalin, his father, an oil industrial. Essad Bey impersonated a Persian prince, denied his Jewish heritage and wanted to publish the first official biography on Mussolini.

If you don't think it can get any crazier, think again – Yuriy Gurzhy (RotFront), Daniel Kahn (Daniel Kahn & The Painted Bird) and Marina Frenk (Kapelsky & Marina) top it all. They take the stories and rumors of Essad Bey even further – till the true story starts to vanish in a cloud of uncertain identities.

Produced at Studio Я at Maxim-Gorki-Theatre.

Yuriy Gurzhy is a musician, songwriter, DJ and producer, known for his work with the groups RotFront, Shtetl Superstars and The Disorientalists as well as his party series Russendisko, Born in UA and Disko Kosmopolit. He was born in Ukraine and now lives in Berlin.