Posted by PG
When you are a child and you are sick, one of the greatest things you eventually learn is to be patient to the bad times. Wait for the wheel to turn and suffer your destiny! Another important lesson is that of action and reaction. If you are sweaty after football and stay in a draft, you are likely to get a cold. If you eat a jar of nutella while watching the telly, you will have a stomach ache and even throw up and end up not even able to smell the thing for a few weeks... But, when you take as much care as you can, all the time acquiring knowledge and moving into adulthood, and still get colds and nausea and temperature and worst still things totally our of your control, such as chickenpox, then you learn what unfairness is! And learn to deal with that too...
Although we have been promoting for quite some time, the events leading to our gig at Cargo (in association with Seb Merrick at Kazum!), did make me go back to all I have experienced while growing up. And the prevalent feeling was of unfairness, of promotional martyrdom if I may say!
Shantel and his Bucovina Club compilations have had such a great success in making many people aware of an alternative clubbing experience. A more sociable, more human kind of way... Intelligently bringing in all these sounds of the Central and Eastern Europe with superb production and a minimal and stylish clubland polish, his dj sets can survive anything from a bunch of dazed and confused students in Nuremberg (don't have a clue whether he ever played there and how the student's look like) to the educated, critical and middle-aged crowd of the BBC World Music Awards (again, haven't been there, just like taking the piss! But I have been told things by insiders and that should be a credible enough reference for a blog).
Having had invited him already once at a Costa Urbana night at our spiritual house at the Notting Hill Arts Club back in June, we thought he is the man to open our Cargo events for this Autumn in this promising collaboration with the Kazum clan! There was a very convenient coincidence with him gigging at Bestival on the weekend (sssh, but such things make an independent promoter's, like ourselves, life so much better... don't have to say why, you guess), so we WENT FOR IT.
Really went for it and built and event around him. We arranged a great Roma troupe, GypsyStars, to come along which hopefully, some of you reading this blog had the chance to enjoy! I have to say at this point that until they actually showed up we had no idea how many people they are going to be and what instruments they would bring along...! But, who cares? They were superb... We then wrote a press release, designed our flyers and spread the word as far and wide as we could.
The first blow came in an internet cafe in Lecce (Salento, South Italy) while on a preliminary research trip on tarantismo and the revival of folk music, namely la pizzica, with Pavla Fleischer. More on that on a dedicated blog to be announced soon. So, there I was sitting comfortably in the air-conditioned internet cafe avoiding the scourging southern noon sun, casually checking my inbox when I received the news that Shantel cancelled, what?, yes cancelled, Bestival! After a few stressful phone calls in the days that followed and to cut a long long story short we did manage to secure Shantel to appear on our Thursday at Cargo in a flash visit. He would have to fly directly from the Bucovina Club stronghold, that is Frankfurt Am Main itself! After some thought with Seb, guess what, WE WENT FOR IT again!
Thursday the seventh of September, ten in the morning. I m about to go pick the Bucovina Prince from East London's cosy airport. I didn't even manage to walk to the kitchen for my espresso... Shantel got caught up in a bomb scare at the airport, he accidentally got mingled with the usual suspect looking people, apparently they proved to be Indian but what the heck, they also found him carrying some suspect looking dark coloured hardened fabric hand bag with unidentified silver surfaced circular plastic wafers that had names of foreigners scribbled on them (his CD collection apprarently!) and, most importantly, he was found with a little, health store size, container of mint oil on him. Sorry, we are just getting used to this world...
To cut another long story short, and some pretty nasty scenes of desperation and offensive language, we realised there was no way for Shantel to be present. Dreadful. And bloody stressful since we are by now five hours before the event opens. Robert Soko comes to mind, he is the only man that can stand up to Shantel's calibre this side of the Atlantic and within reasonable reach, well, that is Berlin! Robert, a great Bosnian soul, is veteran of the scene. Starting as a young immigrants' event back in early nineties Berlin, at a local punk bar, his brainchild became one of the city's cultural phenomena and nightlife hotspot such as Russian Disko and later Shantel's Bucovina Club in Frankfurt. As Balkanbeats they have just released their second compilation album (the first one has been sold around the world), they maintain a long-standing residency at the Mudd club, they released an autobiographical documentary and they constantly travel, spreading the bbeats! It is really worth checking their website, this is not a glamorous dj career, it is a life story. So, we called up Robert, and that mountain of a man, despite this mad request, said he would be up for it. Things were looking fine again, we would not let our crowd down. A suitable flight was found allowing plenty of time for him to end up behind Cargo's decks even if things went wrong. So, yes, yes, yes... WE WENT FOR IT once again, this is how far we are ready to go!
But Fate had other plans as it often is. Despite Robert Soko getting at Berlin's SFX airport in record time 1.1/2 before the flight, just to be sure this time, his flight had an escalating delay of five hours. Did we ever ask to be promotional martyrs? No, no, no! And while this was unfolding in Berlin I had been standing at the reception of Cargo, the event rolling already, explaining to guests the unfortunate incident in Frankfurt and glorifying our swift response with Robert Soko, crossing my fingers that there will not be any more delays announced. When I received a phone call from Robert at half past nine that evening, I had already converted to stoicism (school of philosophy in 300 BC Athens by Zeno of Cyprus that abruptly summarises in that a stoic achieves happiness by submission to destiny) to be upset by the fact that he would not made it either. At some point the image of Shantel and Robert sitting in a hip Berlin cafe crying of laughter did cross my mind! I was losing it... But, "Hey", I said to myself, we had Seb already spinning some Ezma, Taraf de Haidouks and Selim Sesler, the band was about to start, there was Nova with his records lined-up and Penny Metal with her Mad Tunes coming to the rescue, even cutting her Wireless FM show short - respect! "Hey", I said again, to Seb this time, we have GypsyStars, we have the music, we have the people, the party has started already man, let's go for it! And this time WE WENT FOR IT big time, all the way, and we had a BLOODY GOOD TIME!
Thinking about it, now, three days after while the fourth is about to dawn, all I can say that it was worth the hassle. We would have never given up on what we promised to our mailing list and press release without a fight and despite everything we managed to deliver a night that was fun, exciting and fresh! Apologies to those who came and were not entertained. Mind you, we now have complimentary and re-issued flights for both Shantel and Robert Soko, so keep an eye on our calendar!
Cest Pagrav