STEFAN HANTEL of SHANTEL & BUCOVINA CLUB ORKESTAR: WOMAD 2019 Interviews
An interview by Tim Gruar.
Tim Gruar continues his series profiling artists coming to Womad in March, this time talking to Germany based Stefan Hantel (a.k.a. Shantel) of Shantel & Bucovina Club Orkestar.
Stefan began his music career as a DJ, playing mainly hard core EDM for club-goers in Frankfurt. However, after visiting the home of his German-Jewish-Romanian parents Bucovina, Romania, he became inspired by diverse local multi-ethnic music of that region and used it as the ‘backbone’ (as he calls it) of his now immensely popular Bucovina Club Nights. He’s moved from playing club beats to his own Romani-tinged remixes.
And the response has been ‘ecstatic’, he says. Since starting out in the early 1990’s he’s picked up a BBC Award for World Music (2006) and produced remixes for Sacha Baron Cohen’s movie Borat. He’s also put together his own “Orkestar”, producing CDs on his label Essay Recordings, hitting big with the club banger Disco Partizani. It’s his big Romani sound and his dynamic “Orkestar” that Shantel will be bringing to Womad in March, this year.
To find out more, I put in a call to his home in Frankfurt. While Hantel froze in the hash European winter, I was sweltering in the 28+ degree heat of the Hawkes Bay…
“I hope it will still be hot when I get there. I’m really looking forward to coming!”
And we are looking forward to you, too. Tell me why you changed from EDM to playing music from Bucovina. What was the appeal for you?
“My Grandparents – On my mother’s side – they came from Czernowitz. That is Bucovina’s capital. Bucovina is a ‘self-controlled state’ (it sits between Romania and the Ukraine). Before the war (WWII) it had a reputation for being very, err – ‘cosmo-political’ – because it is this melting pot of different cultures and ethnicities. So, Czernowitz has this very strong scene – music, cabaret, books, clubs, theatre, etc.”
The Austrian’s call it shmeh, I believe?
“Exactly. That’s the word I use. It means ‘character, vibe, style. A person or place that’s made up of lots of elements, and ideas and philosophies.”
You’ve been there a few times now. What was it like to visit this place, the first time?
“Bucovina? I went, in a car, from Kiev, I think… about 1996. And it was like a road movie, to discover all these little street, farms, buildings. I found my Grandparents’ house. It was very emotional for me, to find the roots of my family, like that. When I returned, I was shaken and wanted to rebuild this life…. I was torn between the connection to the past and now. But you can’t really go back. Europe is a place that is always going forward, changing and often it destroys the past while making things new. It’s finished. So you leave it, as a memory.
I started to do research – old records from my grandparents, and a lot of mine that I got when I was there. That old sound wasn’t really happening anymore. It wasn’t popular in Romania, Ukraine, etc anymore and what I thought I would do is, well, bring it back, to my audiences.”
Those early Bucovina parties, were they a shock for the Frankfurt crowds?
“When I started, I made a real decision – only to play this sound. I didn’t compromise or go back to playing, say, drum ‘n’ bass crossovers. I say this all the time, but it’s true that the music, it immediately became a kind of style to love among those people who were not connected in their own cultures to the music I played.
My DJ friends, they said, “Mate, what are you doing with this noisy folklore? Are you crazy-mad? You are throwing your career away. Turning away from what works.” They couldn’t understand, at first, I had to use my own money (to pay for it all). I started my own label, took risks but they paid off.”
Who were ‘your people’, your audiences?
“Well, they were those who used to go to those big house parties, or like hip hop and such. And then some were also second or maybe third generation immigrants from what was Yugoslavia, Romania, Turkey, Austria. They might have been born in in Germany, but they connect through this ‘gypsy’ culture and sound. I think, though you can’t really just call it ‘gypsy’ music. It’s ‘European’ music, a real blend of many styles. The ‘gypsy’ aspect relates, I say, to how it’s transient – always moving and resettling at a new location. For some of the club goers it was also the first time that they’d discovered their own roots and ancestry.”
Do you think you were ‘mainstreaming’ Gypsy culture?
“As I said, it’s a ‘European’ sound – there’s no actual genre called ‘Gypsy music’. It’s happening in urban places – Paris, Berlin, Frankfurt. All these little parties with music from Eastern Europe, they aren’t a representation of the Romanian sound, for example. It has a strong influence, with roots in music from South-Eastern Europe.
I also do, besides Bucovina Club, a Balkan Beats night, Russendisko music (that’s more Russian – romantic and anarchic). Germany is between Western and Eastern Europe so we are exposed to every style. I was the first place to hold these parties – now it’s in Paris and even London. To me, it’s like a curtain coming down – the Berlin Wall falls, and a the younger generation has, as part of that exposure to new things, discovered Eastern Europe. My parents, and those before, they thought of the East as a place of the evil Communists – now it’s became a funny, sentimental, romantic thing.”
Do you think it’s just nostalgia?
“Well, yes a kind of stereotype, a cliché. You go to an Irish pub and dance to jigs; you go to a Jamaican club and dance to Reggae or Dance Hall; you have Maori music – do you dance or sing to that? Well, because people liked to party, they like to find something new, beyond this normal pop culture and dance culture. I think, also people are starting to wake up to their identity and seek out what’s in their own DNA.
There’s so much blending of styles, a mish-mash – especially techno – it became like rock ‘n’ roll mainstream. But EDM, it had so many different genres that nobody really understood it anymore. This minimal house, or progressive or dark step drum’n’bass? Whatever. This new Eastern European thing – suddenly a sound that immediately brought emotion. It’s music that comes from the body – dynamic because it’s fast, then slow, then fast again. And the party is alive. It’s boiling, exploding!”
View this post on Instagram
Now, I understand that you’ve got a recording on the Borat movie soundtrack?
“So, the actor and comedian Sacha Baron Cohen (Ali G, etc.), came to one of my Bucovina Club parties. This was in Tel Aviv, in Israel. He loved what I was doing, making this music with a gypsy feel, remixing it and revving the crowd. For his movie Borat, he or his ‘people’ did the license for a couple of my productions and when the movie was ready for release in Germany, the distribution company asked me if I could do a short tour around the country to promote the movie. Sacha, he came to three of those shows.”
Wow. How did that work?
“It was a thing we made up at the time, on the night. We didn’t have a plan. I put on a song, I was singing, we displayed a few clips from the movie. He spontaneously joined in. No big deal.”
Shantel & Bucovina Club Orkestar will be performing headlining musical sets on the Todd Energy Brooklands Stage at 9.30pm on the 16th March and on the TSB Bowl Stage at 8.45pm on the 17th March. Tickets to WOMAD 2019 are still available from the WOMAD website, but get in quick as this is looking like it will sell out!
If you enjoyed this content, please consider donating towards the running of Ambient Light, covering expenses and allowing us to expand the coverage you love by clicking the red button below (Desktop) or visiting our PressPatron page (Mobile).