HAZARSKE - Review from Eddie Cooney

That Serbian singer-songwriter MILOŠ ZUBAC would eventually record an album of blues music was inevitable. The genre is part of his musical soul and heritage and infuses everything he does. Latest album Hazarske * * * * (Khazars) (KREATIVNI CENTAR VIGVAM www.miloszubac.bandcamp.com) is a collaboration with talented guitarist Milovan Đuđić, leader of THE PETTING BLUES BAND (www.thepettingbluesband.com).

The two musicians have worked together before in Zubac's band Prkos Drumski about which I have waxed lyrical many times before in these pages. Đuđić was always an extraordinary talent and never going to be in somebody else's band for long. On this occasion he recorded, arranged and produced the album as well as drawing many of his musical associates into the project. The sound of a horse neighing starts and finishes the album, like a journey beginning and ending. The roving theme pervades throughout, from the disappeared nomadic tribe of its title to a journey through different sub-genres of the blues.

Each track is individually different from the others and a credit to Đuđić's production skills and maturing mastery as a musician. The opening, title track has an inspired slide guitar evocative of horses galloping across a prairie and clouds of dust left swirling in their wake. The closing instrumental 'Čergarska (Mej)' has a haunting quality like something ancient and lost crying not to be forgotten.

Lyrics for the songs are mostly taken from a book, Hazarske pesme (Khazar Poems), written by Zubac's father Pero but banned under the Milosevic regime. There was no reason in the poems for the banning order. It was banned because the poet had fallen from political favour. Only one copy survived the political machinations and was smuggled to the poet by a brave publisher. Pero Zubac identified himself with the ancient Khazars and they became a metaphor for his life during those dark times of abandonment, looking for his lost tribe.

Now the poet's son and his guitar-playing genius friend have turned the dark memory into something beautiful by righting a wrong while preserving the memory of an injustice, and giving a damaged butterfly wings with which to fly again.

 

Eddie Cooney

Continental Drift

RnR Magazine 85/2020.