Live music

Balkan Bulgar

Balkan Bulgar plays traditional folk music from Bulgaria, Macedonia, Hungary, Romania, Greece and some klezmer music. We love playing together with dancers (oriental/gypsy) at concerts or with dancing audience at private parties.

We live in the Copenhagen area, where we have played together for 12-15 years. We like the down to earth party-music that makes your feet dance and the beautiful, languishing melodies that make you melt.

Kerstin Backlin - violin
Katrine Clante - clarinet/recorder

Simon Øltieng - accordion/double bass
Klaus Mogensen - guitar/double bass
Marianne Mogensen - percussion (davul, req, tabla, def)/dance

Balkan Bulgar has performed at small venues, culture houses, cafés, on horse wagon tours and at World Music Festival at the venue Global Copenhagen. The picture above is from that festival 2007 with Karen Jørgensen. We have had the brilliant Romanian zymbalom player George Michalache as guest soloist as well as playing at concerts with the choir Kitka and the dance group Crihalma.

For sound samples go to www.balkanbulgar.dk

Playing for dancing

I play polska tunes from many parts of Sweden, as well as schottis and waltz. This music gives a feeling of the Nordic nature. It can have very different character, maybe influenced by the landscape and the life conditions where it originated; soft and swaying, whirling and wild, bouncy and bold. Always with an insisting puls driving you forward.
I´ve arranged events about different regions of Sweden - Småland, Skåne, Värmland, Jämtland og Dalarna - in series for the Swedish church in Copenhagen, called "Svenska landskap - i folkton och dans. Living lectures with dancers, fiddlers, and the audience joining for the last dance.

Skabssvenskerne

Skabssvenskerne was a group started by Kerstin Backlin, or rather it grow out of her violin teaching, fueled by different projects, and requests to play for dance evenings at the folk music clubs in Copenhagen and Roskilde. The main aim was to build up a varied repertoire, so that polska dancers could really enjoy their special feinschmecker polskas. Finetuning the character and the different rhythm patterns, with music from Dalarna, Jämtland, Småland, Värmland, Skåne, Røros in Norway, and Medelpad, was quite a challenge. After some years our ambition also grew to encouraging new people and young people to venture on to the dance floor. The concept "POLSKA-bal" with introductory dance workshops, a folk choir, and finishing with Allspel (all can join in the band) became very popular. High energy! The instruments were violins, accordion/recorder and alto clarinet.

Above from 2012. Below, where we started in 2006.

Other constellations

Left: with Kurt Larsen,
above with
Karen Jørgensen.