News in from Junction 2 Music : New album from Mahala Rai Banda. Romania’s most gifted musicians live in two villages: Clejani, just south-west of Bucharest, the village of Taraf de Flaidouks string players and Zece Prajini, in Moldavia, where live the brass players of Fanfare Ciocarlia. It is in these two villages, lost in the dust, mud and ice, that you find the crème de la crème, the half-genius half-rascal instrumentalists capable of stirring up a wedding party with a single solo munched at supersonic speed.
Knowing this, where do you find THE great Gypsy group, a sort of Balkan equivalent of the Memphis Horns with the rhythm section from Muscle Shoals, these two being the gold standard of soul music, combining power and finesse, groove and virtuosity? It’s easy, just bring together the musicians from Clejani and of Zece Prajini! “My family comes from Clejani and the band’s horn section is from Zece Prajini: this is as rich as Romanian Gypsy tradition gets” says Aurel lonita, founder and leader of Mahala Rai Banda.
The story of Mahala Ral Banda begins at the end of the nineties with Aurel lonita forming the group Rom Bengale in Bucharest. Rom Bengale were the hottest young Gypsy band in Bucharest, an immediate sensation, yet the instant success would wreck the band with some members of Rom Bengale experiencing what Neil Young once famously described as “the needle and the damage done.” If the Rom Bengale experience traumatised Aurel it didn’t destroy his vision of a band who would blend the best of the old and the new Gypsy music into something fresh and powerful: Malaha Rai Banda was born (‘mahala’ is the name given to Gypsy ghettos across the Balkans).
Mahala Rai Banda’s eponymous debut album came out in 2005, leading the band to tour widely across Europe and becoming a favourite with audiences who wanted to party. Their hi-energy performances found them rocking clubs and storming festivals.
A meeting with Henry Ernst co-founder of the German label Asphalt Tango led Mahala Rai Banda to record Ghetto Blasters in Bucharest in 2009. " I had to take a stand to shape he band as I believed they should sound and return to our roots", said Aurel " and since we started working with Asphalt Tango productions my vision is being realised. The fresh input has helped us develop our sound into a real blast of brass. The new Mahala Rai Banda have taken the Balkan sound forward massively, believe me the new Mahala Rai Banda will blow minds!"
This new album offers an exciting mix of Gypsy tradition and manele ( Romania's Gypsy pop music) with vocal contributions from mahala rocker Jony Iliev, from Antoine Tato Garcia from the French Rhumba Flamenco group Kaloome, form members of the legendary band Fanfare Ciocarlia and from the young singer Florentina Sandhu.
In Romania you have the lautari past which stretches across centuries and the manele, the present gypsy pop dance music. We are so young that we know the manele yet the lautari music was made by our forefathers. With Mahala Rai Banda we fuse the two and create Oriental brass music,very strong, very powerful and perfect for dancing." says Aurel
You can catch Mahala Rai Banda as they perform with the Gypsy Queens and Kings Tour.
