ANTICE, DZANAM DUSICE
Created on 26/11/2005Latest update on 09/05/2023
Artist: Calgija
Author: traditional
Label: Stoof
Year: 1978
Serious Dutch folk band formed in Utrecht by etnomusicologist Wouter Swets (later with Al-Farabi), focusing on music from the Balkans and Turkey. Title means Antica, My Sweet Soul, a Macedonian song about a girl who has to take care of her younger sister and therefore can't find a husband. It's a local dance with roots in the repertoire of troubadours. It was known during the Middle Ages as Nevestinko Oro (The Bride's Reel). The oro was and still is a circle dance performed on bagpipe (gajda) at weddings in Macedonia. What's left of Calgija (Macedonian for 'rhythm') has become a wedding band. There's a 1963 recording of Nevestinsko Oro (by Tale Ognenovski for PGP-RTB), so at least that one is older but it did not inspire Kate Bush.
Covers:
- 1989:
Kate Bush [counter melody in The Sensual World with Davey Spillane on Uillean pipes]
- 1992:
Andy Irvine & Davy Spillane [as Antice on album East Wind]
- 1996:
Oni Wytars Ensemble [as Nevestinsko Oro on three reissues on the Naxos label: On The Way To Bethlehem: Music Of The Medieval Pilgrim, The Glory Of Early Music and Early Music For Meditation]
- 2004:
Kaldrma [as Antica, Dzanam Dusice and as Nevestinsko Oro]
- 2005:
In Taberna [as Nevestinsko Oro; Spanish group with a Medieval oriental (Tierra Santa) canon]
- 2007:
Zephyr Quartet [idem]
Kate Bush received the Galgija cassette during an interview for Dutch rock magazine Oor. She forgot the name of the journalist (Jan Libbenga) by the time she used this melody in The Sensual World, which of course was no excuse to omit any form of credit or acknowledgement. On her 2011 album Director's Cut, holding a revised version of Sensual World (as Flower Of The Mountain), Kate does credit Libbenga for handing her this Macedonian melody. Also, the Director's Cut notes reveal why her lyrics heavily leaned on James Joyce's vocabulary in Ulysses, the Monologue of Molly Bloom in particular (Mmh yes). Joyce's heir refused her to use that monologue verbatim in '89. By 2011 that problem was solved, so here's the Sensual World finally the way she always wanted us to hear it.
