Goran Bregovic participated last September at the Getxo Folk Festival (Bizkaia). Fortunately, some of my friends too, and I knew what I was going to do right now.

Bregovic is one of the main exponents of Balkan music, born in 1950 in Sarajevo (Bosnia-Herzegovina, Yugoslavia of the time). He has been composing sound bands for films and publishing records for decades, and today, together with Fanfare Ciocarlie, he has become an ambassador for this kind of music. Bregovic has also been able to combine the elements of his traditional original music (brass instruments, cinégars scales, proper mode of singing) with electronic and modern sounds, and even with English, attracting a wider audience. Anyway, you have to recognize that the strength that this music has in itself makes you crazy and playing with that advantage is a luxury for them.

The performance did not start badly: they left the public and began to chat, to play between them, two trumpets and two baritones, an instrument similar to the bombardment, of the family of the horn, very common in the centre and east of Europe. Then the saxophonist started the scene and, among all, began the first piece. Meanwhile, the singers were depicted, dressed in costumes typical of two Bulgarian women, a man who exercised the main voice and percussion and, finally, Bregovic in a white suit. Once the piece was finished, they started singing with one of the most well-known songs: Gas Gas Suddenly, a helicon that you couldn't see anywhere, the bottom of the family of wind metals like tuba, started to hear with an impressive volume, supported on an electronic base. The lead singer played the bombs and the Chinese, until I started singing, I'm, and these remained the same on the loudspeakers. In short: half or more of what was heard was recorded before, “canned”. And so they sang all the songs.

But I, as I said before, knew that I would find all this at the Bregovic concert, so instead of thinking that I had paid 30 euros for listening to a record, I tried to enjoy all the positive factors that I could. The musicians on the stage, except the Serbs, the Bulgarian women and the Bosnian Bregovic, were very good, with exceptional quality and taste. He was particularly surprised at the ease with which the saxophonist enjoyed a high speed and a high note of play. The extraordinary fine-tuning that Bulgarian women had, who used quarter-tones, led at some points throughout the auditorium to an absolute silence of tension, and the way of singing of the man who was in the main voice made us all crazy. Bregovic usually accompanied a guitar, made second voices and shouts and gave some song in the main voice. The address – above all the entrance and termination – was carried out by himself.

In the repertoire we find all the known songs: Gas Gas, Ederlezi, Balkaneros, Mesecina… The concert ended with the hymns of the partisans Bella Ciao and Kalashnikov, achieving an unbeatable atmosphere.

We couldn't take the feeling of what we were scammed by, but we enjoyed it, at least me. Which would cost him to take at least two other musicians to play, or pretend, helicon and percussion. Well, this one has also been fined with the Mordaza Act, and now it has no money to pay more musicians.

The Goran Bregovic who had a whole band, choir and string orchestra, and who takes advantage of the last phase of his career to make easy money, is far away.