Review Text
Xenos, bagpipes and drums, sax and voice. From the mountains and valleys of the Balkans, hauntingly beautiful melodies, powerful rhythms - rhythms crafted by countless generations of dancing feet and drumming fingers. Xenos are an internationally acclaimed Balkan Gypsy music band, have played at Womad in the UK and Australia, and toured Australia and Europe for many years. Dance music from Florina (Lerin) with an Australian accent. Florina (or Lerin) is a town and region in northwestern Greece, near the borders of Albania and Macedonia. Much of the population of Florina left to escape the consequences of the Greek civil war of the 1940s and many of these emigrants currently reside in Melbourne. Xenos were invited to Melbourne to play gajda for the Florina Aristotelis Dance Group and spent six years playing for dance performances, social functions, weddings and dowry collections. This CD is the result of those years, a tribute to the wonderful musicians we played alongside, learned from, and the dancers who inspired us.
