Sometime midway through the 1990s, Piet Maris (frontman with the acclaimed Euro roots outfit Jaune Toujours)
began to make contact with gypsy musicians and, through their guidance and contacts, to travel regularly to a Roma
community in Slovakia. Through the latter, the ever curious musician learned their gypsy style of playing. Afterwards,
this repertoire was thoroughly reintepreted by the musicians of Jaune Toujours, who, in their usual fashion, began
pushing the music beyond the boundaries of tradition by adding their own musical flavours to the sound. At first, the
more traditionally-minded gyspies in the band’s audience frowned in astonishment at these changes but the sound
began to catch on with the younger Roma. The latter’s stamp of approval was, ultimately, given authority when two
young Roma singers - Katia and Milka Pohlodkova - joined the band on stage and never left… The gypsy
incarnation that has developed from Jaune Toujours is called Mec Yek and Super Diver City is their latest
recording.
Piet Maris: “When I look back, I’m pretty impressed with the itinerary we
embarked on together with Katia and Milka . From that first moment on stage,
when we had just fallen into each other’s cultures, as a manner of speaking, we
were still discovering our common identity and the way we deal with music. The
way we look at things, how we’re positioned in our lives, the differences but at
the same time the similarities between the cities we live in... Meanwhile, the
multicultural society has been declared dead – while I was thinking that we even
have not begun yet – up next came the declaration of “superdiversity”... All
those years at least we have worked together to present a valuable, authentic
alternative for the clichés that still surround the Roma, the gypsies.”
As you’d expect from Mec Yek’s origins, Super Diver City contains some musical
surprises: twelve tracks, nine particular arrangements of traditional Roma-songs, two
songs written by Katia and Milka and one Amy Winehouse-cover, translated into
Romanès. Some songs show minimal orchestration, other pull out all the stops (now
and then even with a Hammond organ). The band travels back to its nostalgic roots,
from the early years with the Roma in Slovakia, to more contemporary and urban dub,
ska, latin and soul. All nicely mixed together by Shazalakazoo, leading duo in Balkan
Beats from Belgrade, Serbia, who delivered already in 2010 some surprising remixes of
Jaune Toujours and Mec Yek tracks for the remix album RE:PLUGGED. But, against
all expectations: Mec Yek is a gypsy band without violin.