2019
Vienna: Department for Folk Music Research and Ethnomusicology of the University of Music and Performing arts Vienna
Riga: Jāzeps Vītols Latvian Academy of Music.
280-page booklet. ISBN 978-9934-547-04-1. Colour photographs. DVD. 27 tracks (105:39). Recorded between 1977 and 2018.
Zu beziehen:
Institut für Volksmusikforschung und Ethnomusikologie
Anton-von-Webern-Platz 1, 1030 Wien
e-mail: ive-versand@mdw.ac.at
Jashar and Idajet Sejdiu have been making music and creating very popular songs since their early youth. At the same time they have steadily tried to make a larger audience familiar with the music and traditions they are embedded in through radio and television performances as well as sound and video recordings, some of which they have produced themselves. Frequent cooperation with other musicians and music lovers is another important feature of their work. Over a period of more than four decades they have become strong identification figures in musical life among Albanians living in the Sharr Mountains and the Polog Valley areas of North Macedonia.
This engagement is also reflected in the ways both brothers experience and distinguish the music they make. Remarkably, they designate the songs they perform with the local term lazdrane or të lazdruara for “indulged”, with which theymean “beautiful, free and lively”. According to the Sejdiu brothers “these songs contain everything good”, they are like “adored children” who are allowed to do anything they want. The present publication reflects on various views and aspects of this understanding through sounds, pictures and words.