Folk-step? NeuBalkan trash-hop? Oriental-Core? What-the-fuck? Oh, it must be the (in)famous Shazalakazoo!
The duo comprised of Scratchmaster Uce and MC Djura, has been making music since the late 1990s in various incarnations, from improvised radio shows to concerts and club performances, but it was their ‘blasphemical’ blend of Balkan folk and Western electronic beats, using synths and turntables, that made them a notorious household name.
Their globalist approach to music often finds better reception in the West than within its native culture. Simply speaking, Shazalakazoo are most of the times too folk for the urban Balkan crowd and too urban for the folk crowd, so they prefer to play packed shows touring Western Europe instead.
Featuring tracks tittles such as ‘Brasshoper Plague’ and ‘Sarmageddon’, their self-released album Speaking Balkanian (2009) plays with multiple Balkan and Ottoman references, bordering on the absurd. If you want a real taste of Dionysian Balkan crossover, look no further than Shazalakazoo.
