Today, Balkan Express makes its first stop in North Macedonia in several weeks? Months? But who’s counting, right? At any rate, the band in question goes by the name of Foltin and has been around for a while.
North Macedonian band Foltin (photo: Elena Bojadzieva)
Foltin are not so much a band only, but rather an art collective with an emphasis on music. The six-member act blends indie, world and electronic music, funk, jazz and other genres. Their live performances are said to be gravity defying and include theatrical pieces of pseudo-immigrant theatre. And if all of that sounds like a load of horse manure to you, this here show would counter that you really need to visit the Balkans one of these days.
The band has been around since 1995, which makes them positively ancient by today’s standards. And even though they released eleven albums to date, the bulk of their work is in theatre and film music. They wrote for or contributed music to eleven feature-length films and one short documentary, and even starred in two of those. Even more importantly, they wrote music for twenty-five theatre pieces all over the Balkans, including Austria, Bulgaria, Albania and Hungary, and as far away as France.
Foltin are a six-member all-male act, hailing from the northern North Macedonia town of Bitola. Or should that be northern Northern Macedonian town of Bitola? At any rate, the lineup consists of Branislav Nikolov (voice, guitar), Goce Jovanoski (bass), Marjan Stanič (percussion), Pece Nikolovski (clarinet), Pece Trajkovski (digital accordion) and Slavco Jovev (drums).
Given the band’s advanced age, it is no surprise that they went through various lineup iterations over the years. The period between their second and fourth albums was especially turbulent, but thing have settled down considerably since then. Nevertheless, the lineup changes influenced their musical expression as well, as every one of their eleven studio albums is a story unto itself rather than a continuation of the previous one.
Foltin’s latest album is titled Simultan Baknezh and dates back to 2021, meaning that the band is still very much active and productive. And in case you were wondering, their name is a nod to the famed Czech novelist Karel Čapek and his last novel Life And Work of Composer Foltyn. And as for musical influences, they cite Björk, Johnny Cash and Tom Waits.
The lyrics of Foltin's initial three albums were a mixture of phonetic imitations of languages including Macedonian, Spanish, French, Romanian, and Portuguese. Which probably gave the rise to their »pseudo-immigrant theatre« monicker. Over the years, however, things became a blend of Macedonian and English.
And that’s all the time we have for today. Check out Foltin on YouTube, Bandcamo and wherever you get your music from. And Balkan Express will be back next week.
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Balkan Express brings you the latest and/or the greatest in music from the Balkans. On air every Tuesday at 11am on Ara City Radio, it is hosted by Aljaž aka @pengovsky who once did the world a solid and vowed never to sing again in public. Which is how he ended up doing radio.