Dunja Knebl & Kololira (in English)

 

– released May 15th 2020 (Geenger Records)

Tamo gori is Dunja Knebl & Kololira’s third album (release date May 15th, 2020 by Geenger Records on Dunja Knebl’s Bandcamp page).

If compared to their earlier albums it is quite different in style and choice of songs.

When beginning to work on the album more than two years ago, the idea for the album’s story was in the meaning of the Italian saying “Tutto il mondo è un paese” („The whole world is a single village. “, or „People will be people the whole world over. “, or „One world, one people “.), and now that the album is finished it can apply to today’s pandemic situation when we are all “in the same pot”.

Even though the songs are old traditional folk songs from different countries (England, Ukraine, Russia, USA, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina), dating from some other, even ancient times, they are universal and timeless in describing human nature.

Eleven songs from different countries in different languages tell the story of man’s eternal struggle to find happiness and love, but the obstacles in his way are most often the ones he creates himself (wars of all kinds, deceit, lies, even self-destruction). However, there is always a light in the darkness, but sometimes we ourselves must be this light.

The audio was recorded, mixed and mastered by Doringo at Kramasonik Studio, Zagreb, and produced by Doringo and Dunja Knebl& Kololira (from November 2018 till March, 2020).

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Following our first  album “Tamo doli” we have released a second one entitled “I Mara i cvetje” (release date October 17th, 2015). There are 14 songs in the album, and it can be listened to and bought via Bandcamp. https://dunjaknebl.bandcamp.com/album/i-mara-i-cvetje

The songs are once again ancient ones, mostly coming from books and mostly forgotten. Some of them have never been recorded before. It is great fun finding a “sound” for a song one has never heard.

Kololira’s beginnings:

Dunja Knebl & Friends was the band’s name when they first got together to play at the EBU Festival in 2013 as representatives of the Croatian Radio.
They liked playing together so much that they chose to continue as KOLOLIRA (Croatian for hurdy gurdy) with many plans ahead.
What were just plans turned out to be exactly what they wished for in real life: they played at the Solin  ETHNOAMBIENT festival in July the same year, their first album (Tamo doli) was released in October, 2013, as well as their video clip Kad ja prodjem jednu goru. So, in nine months the band performed at two international world music festivals, recorded their first album, and filmed their first video clip.
This was topped with a great opinion on their performance by Elizabeth Kinder in her regular column in the world music magazine fRoots:
“It was odd, or maybe perfect synchronicity, that I’d been thinking about Charlie
Gillett moments before and how he might have liked the brilliant Croatian folk band
Kololira that had just been playing. The ancient songs sounded so cool and modern
with singer Dunja Knebl (reminding me of Nico at her best), doing what Shirley
Collins did for English folk song.”
Then another compliment from fRoots magazine: a song  from their album (Cula jesam) was included in the December/January compilation, followed by an article about Dunja Knebl in  the April edition.
In the summer of 2014 TAMO DOLI was in the European World Music charts for two months (July & August), and Kololira performed at several festivals.
Songlines reviewer Kim Burton wrote “Who knew melancholic songs of woe could be such fun?” and “…this is a highly enjoyable contribution from a set of fine musicians”, and TAMO DOLI was given 4 stars out of 5.

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