Janam & Veretski Pass at The Back Room

Janam
Fusing funky Balkan rhythms, gritty Appalachian ballads, arresting vocal harmonies and enchanting acoustic textures, Janam creates a one-of-kind musical experience. Janam unites some of the Bay Area's most playful and imaginative devotees of southern Balkan and American roots music who weave together folk tunes and their own colorful compositions and take their audiences on a labyrinthine musical ride.

Formed in 2008, the group is a tight-knit ensemble of multi-instrumentalists who have garnered recognition throughout California and the Northwest, playing to mesmerized audiences and frenzied folk dancers up and down the coast. Janam proves that the foothills of the Balkans and the Appalachians lie in Oakland. The group’s funky meters, bittersweet modes, driving tunes, and sultry ballads invoke the nightingales and dark eyes, the hot love and cold hollows of Europe and America’s most musical mountains....

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Janam
Fusing funky Balkan rhythms, gritty Appalachian ballads, arresting vocal harmonies and enchanting acoustic textures, Janam creates a one-of-kind musical experience. Janam unites some of the Bay Area's most playful and imaginative devotees of southern Balkan and American roots music who weave together folk tunes and their own colorful compositions and take their audiences on a labyrinthine musical ride.

Formed in 2008, the group is a tight-knit ensemble of multi-instrumentalists who have garnered recognition throughout California and the Northwest, playing to mesmerized audiences and frenzied folk dancers up and down the coast. Janam proves that the foothills of the Balkans and the Appalachians lie in Oakland. The group’s funky meters, bittersweet modes, driving tunes, and sultry ballads invoke the nightingales and dark eyes, the hot love and cold hollows of Europe and America’s most musical mountains.
Veretski Pass
Music from the Carpathian Bow

Taking its name from the mountain pass through which Magyar tribes crossed into the Carpathian basin to settle what later became the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Veretski Pass offers a unique and exciting combination of virtuosic musicianship and raw energy that has excited concertgoers across the world.

The trio plays “Old Country” music with origins in the Ottoman Empire, once fabled as the borderlands of the East and the West. In a true collage of Carpathian, Jewish, Romanian and Ottoman styles, typical suites contain dances from Moldavia and Bessarabia, Jewish melodies from Poland and Rumania, Hutzul wedding music from Carpathian-Ruthenia, and haunting Rebetic aires from Smyrna, seamlessly integrated with original compositions. Veretski Pass recently performed at the Concertgebouw Concert Hall in Amsterdam, and their CDs have repeatedly been on the 10-best recording lists of journalists.

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