News
June 10, 2023
Ferus "The King" Mustafov 1950 - 2023
On May 22. died Ferus "The King" Mustafov 72 years old in Skopje. He was the real king of Macedonian Roma music, not only in Macedonia, but all over the world. He played on over 40 albums.
This is a great loss for his family, friends and the musical community in Macedonia. May he rest in peace.
Annemiek wrote a very interesting story about "Despina", a song from Ohrid. You can find it here.
Added 40 new albums to content since the last update.
January 14, 2023
First of all we wish you all a very healthy and happy 2023. Let's hope that this year brings peace all over the world.
The last half year we did not update the site. We did a (partly) renovation of our house, including the room where the collection is stored. So the whole collection, including a lot of books, had to be stored elsewhere in our house and put back. That was quite a job. Nethertheless we added 228 new albums to the collection.
We added the audio tracks of last 10 LP's (27 - 36) of the Dora Stratou collection.
August 10, 2022
Added a documentary video "Scratches on your Soul" about us and the Macedonian part of the collection produced by Vidi Vaka (See This). Vidi Vaka is an independent Macedonian journalistic platform that publishes video's on Facebook, Instagram and Youtube about social items and abuses like polution, judicial matters, etc. The video was recorded in the Netherlands and in Macedonia in 2019 and premiered in October 2020 during a festival with documentaries about music. It can be viewed here.
Added 228 new albums to the collection.
Added the audio tracks of 10 LP's (17 - 26) of the Dora Stratou collection.
Added two video's with Greek dances produced by the Dora Stratou Group. They can also be viewed here.
June 5, 2022
Added 29 new albums to the collection.
Added the audio tracks of 10 LP's of the Dora Stratou collection.
March 17, 2022
Added 60 new albums to the collection.
Added the biographies of Dora Stratou and her successor, Alkis Raftis to the story about her and added more audio tracks.
We received the sad news that Atanas Kolarovski died this month at the age of 96. From him I (Peter) learned Macedonian dances and heard "real" Macedonian music for the first time in the mid sixties. An obituary circulates, based on the Tanec publication of his death. You can read this here (it will be shown in your default pdf viewer).
January 7, 2022
We wish you all the best for the new year, stay healthy and may it be a year in which you are successful, with a lot of music and that this pandemic disappears!
We started a story about Dora Stratou the founder of what is now "Dora Stratou Dance Theater". The group is still performing in Athens every year during summer in their own theater in Athens, now under the direction of Prof. Alkis Raftis.
The story starts with a discography, which you can find here and the first music tracks here.
It will be extended in the future.
September 25, 2021
For a long time we did not update the site for a couple of reasons:
- a lot of family business
- surviving a computer crash
- rewriting the code of the database program; in the past there were made so many workarounds of problems, that the program tended to become instable
Nevertheless in addition to all these activities we were able to add 54 new albums.
January 21, 2021
Zoran Džorlev 1967 - 2021
We received the sad news that Zoran Džorlev passed away on January 1st, 53 years old. We remember the interesting and pleasant discussions we had with him especially during the period that he was the director of Tanec.
This is a great loss for his family, friends and the musical community of Northern Macedonia. We wish his family and friends a lot of strength in dealing with this great loss.
Added 59 new albums to content since the last update.
Added the tracks of three 12 inch Sperry Records lp records. You can find them here.
In the last update we promised on Podcast page that there would be presented the first volume. Due to different reasons we couldn't realize that. But now it is there. Let us know if you like it. Comments, suggestions always very welcome.
September 6, 2020
Added the music of the last 7 inch Albanian Artexport record and some 9 and 10 inch records from the collection. Added 71 new albums to content.
We registered the site by the Dutch copyright organisation and that had some impact on the structure of the site to comply with their rules. You have to buy a license for each podcast but a podcast with more volumes is considered as one podcast. We gave it the name "Picks from the Collection", and posted the first part.
- the compilation of the 78 rpm Macedonian Sperry records has been moved to the end op that page (Andio/Macedonia Sperry Records) as a stream.
- the full versions of the examples used in the story "Migrating Melodies" has been moved to the end op that page (Stories/Migrating Melodies) as a stream.
July 19, 2020
Added the music of nine 7 inch Albanian Artexport records. Added 59 new albums to content.
Three weeks ago we reached a milestone: the hundred thousandth track digitized and placed on our server!
June 6, 2020
We removed the news items from before 2020, because they were not any longer relevant. With one exception, our trips to Skopje and Sinj in 2018, which has been moved to "About/Stories/Our travels in 2018".
Under the menu item "Mulltimedia/Audio", "Albania" and "Kosovo" have been split into two seperate menu items. We added 24 7 inch Albanian Artexport, some Balkanton and Supraphon albums with Albanian music to the new "Albania" item. More Albanian music will be added in the next update.
May 3, 2020
We replaced the long index list on top of the page "Entire Collection" by a menu. If the menu item has
a "►" after the menu item there will be a sub menu with more items. If you move your mouse pointer over that item the sub menu will open automatically.
Alle Sperry Macedonian 78 rpm recordings, which we got from Larry Weiner, are now added. You can find them here.
There is a new option in the menu item "Multimedia": "Podcasts". The general idea is to publish records from the Balkan countries (our "core business") under "Audio". If this records have a few tracks (17 cm single and ep records) we will make a podcast for easy-listening with a compilation of that records. But we plan also podcasts which relate to the whole collection; for example bagpipes from Western Europe to the Caucasus, music we like very much, in short everything we think is interesting. And if you have any suggestions, let us know at collection@tradmusictrails.com.
For now we have added four podcasts:
- Migrating Melodies
- Sperry 78 rpm records, part 1
- Sperry 78 rpm records, part 2
- Sperry 78 rpm records, part 3
The first contains the full tracks of the examples we used for presentation at the symposium of the ICTM Study Group on Music and Dance in Southeastern Europe about the migration of melodies. The other three are the Sperry records as seperately published in the menu item "Audio". Each podcast so far has a duration of about one and a half hour.
There are two new stories. One written by Annemiek about our visit to Sinj and Gljev in Dalmatia in 2018 and one by our friend Hugo Strötbaum how he scored a cura (type of saz) in Konya.
There are no new albums added.
April 12, 2020
Most important, we hope you are all safe and sound and you, your family and friends are in good health. These are worrying times!
As we said in the news of January we were busy with a total make over of the site, and here it is! We think that it is a huge improvement over the old one and that you will like it. This would not possible without the fantastic help of Zoran Stalevski, the owner of the site Pesna.org. We met him and his wife when Annemiek followed a course of Macedonian language on the shore of Lake Ohrid and we stayed there for almost a month. He gave us a lot of good advices and offered his help. He did nearly the complete programming of the site; a real Macedonian-Dutch co-production! We thank him very much for that.
From now on we will publish more music. We will focus on the Balkan and older recordings that are not any longer available. We start with the eight records of Sperry Records, recordings made in Macedonia by Sperry Boge. These 78 rpm records are from the collection of Larry Weiner (USA), who was so kind to give us permission to publish them on our site. They were originally published on the site of Folklorediscography, but that site is no longer accessible. Thanks to Larry Weiner for this gesture. Later on this year we will publish a number of Artexport Tirana records, issued in Albania in the seventies and eighties. For some other records we are negociating with the Dutch Copyright Authorities. You can find the Sperry recordings here.
January 15, 2020
First we wish you a very successful 2020, a good health and lots of music!
We were very busy last half year so there was not much time for an update, but here it is. We removed the content of the collection in PDF format, and placed the data itself on the server. This should be faster than downloading the PDF. We noticed that the time to download the content was very fast in Chrome but in Firefox and Edge it took more time. We have a fast fiber connection here; Chrome loaded in one second. Edge about five and Firefox about six seconds. So Chrome is the way to go! On top of the collection web page is a detailed index. If you click on it you will go directly to that region or country.
We are busy with a total make over of the site, it will be published in a couple of months. It will have a modern "look and feel" and will run on a desktop, tablet, mobile phone.