Avo Kanto by BGKO – Barcelona Gipsy balKan Orchestra (Spain) – 2018
The title of the album is Esperanto for “the songs of our ancestors” and the track list of ‘Avo Kanto’ consists almost entirely of traditionals from all over Eastern Europe, ranging from melancholic songs like ‘Csi Lav Tu’ (Hungary), ‘Livisiani Mou Perdika’ (Greece/Turkey) and ‘Makedonsko Devojče’ (Macedonia), to festive dance tunes like ‘Krivo Sadovsko Horo’ (Bulgaria), the slightly psychedelic sounding ‘Raikos’ (Macedonia) or ‘Koje Li You Doba Noći’ (Serbia).
As a bonus, at the request of the band’s fans, the album concludes with ‘Lule Lule’, a song from Arbëreshë culture, an Albanian minority in southern Italy and Sicily, and the first song the band recorded back in 2015 after changing their name from Barcelona Gipsy Klezmer Orchestra into Barcelona Gipsy Balkan Orchestra.