Robert Šoko: We have now seen almost everything: Balkans, Eastern Europe, Oriental, Jewish etc…Everything has somehow been recycled and has already been integrated into the cultural landscape of Europe. What do you think could be new?
What’s your gut feeling now?

Shantel: A lot of things have happened, but the determining question is, to what extent do marginalised sounds or cultures, especially in the Northwest European urban zones, have a chance to gain in significance?
I have the feeling that, looking back, towards  the end of the 90s, when Southeastern Europe, so to speak, took on a new and different musical meaning, it was almost like a fad. The one thing was the direction that has long been referred to as Balkan Beats – which was actually always a bit of “fake news”.

Of course, on the one hand,  it had something to do with the fact that there was a migration of people, triggered by the wars in Yugoslavia, as well as by communities that, in Berlin for example, but also in other European big cities, suddenly gave impetus to a kind of nostalgia or renaissance. The result was that the music from one’s childhood, which was actually uncool, suddenly became cool.

I experienced this, for example, with regards to my own family, some of whom  had their roots in Romania. It was always the case that this old sound, such as Taraf de Haïdouks or Maria Tanase, had something “folkloristic” and “uncool” about it. And it was only via the diaspora that it suddenly got  a new context.

Robert Šoko: There was, of course, the so-called Diaspora  before the Yugoslavian wars –  the “Gastarbeiter generation” who, in turn, had their own taste in music. We younger Yugoslavs called their music “turbo-folk”. However, this genre  hardly had any relevance in European musical culture. 

Shantel: Everything was already there. But what differed was the fact that the sound-aesthetics changed in a revolutionary way. Suddenly. I call this the “Buena Vista Social Club Phenomenon”. That means the music as such wasn’t really different.
When I  discovered Balkan brass on cassette, I guess I knew it vaguely from my childhood. An album by Fejat Sejdić Orkestar fell into my hands. It totally blew my mind. Later I asked round if the recordings were still in existence, because the production was unbearable, super trashy. There was a certain appeal to that trashiness, but still, one question I asked myself was, could you bring this raw sound to a level that it really deserves, with good production, good microphones, etc?
There were bands that definitely had pop star qualities, but the production just wasn’t there. I had the tapes sent to me and basically redid the production and did a remix. This suddenly gave it a different quality.

The World Music cachet  always bothered me – this was the sticking point  – I loved this music, but I always had the feeling that the World Music scene –  although it undoubtedly made and still makes an important contribution  –  didn’t really have a pop culture attitude. Pop culture  means, on the one hand, something fast-moving, short-lived, but also, something that can  achieve mainstream success.

Robert Šoko: You’ve proven that best with your productions. This is where my next question comes from: Has Stefan Hantel done this world a favour by encouraging other musicians to dare to take the “new path”? Have you paved the way for many others towards  Southeast Europe and beyond?

Shantel:  There are the Beatles and there are the Rolling Stones, and punk rock. But I wanted something else – basically what turned out to be the highly successful was Bucovina Club, similar  to what you did with BalkanBeats Sound System. Then of course, later, a big step was made with Disko Partizani, where English lyrics were worked into it. By the way, it should be said that experimenting with  English lyrics was generally frowned upon. Brass was in addition totally taboo in Germany. And then, due to our success, all of these Alpine musicians, from the German-Austrian folk music scene – they  got  totally turned onto these “Balkan Crossover” things and started to mix it with their  Alpine tradition. It triggered an insane boom, because suddenly this instrumental cosmos  was completely liberated from this conservative and partly also nationalistic mustiness that folk music had. This happened all over the German speaking world.
On the one hand brass, accordion, more traditional instruments, yes also violin –  instruments that have a different power than an electric guitar or Synthesizer –  suddenly they became legit and completely lost their stuffiness and their “world music stamp” . They became cool.
And then again, many bands in Southeast Europe, in Romania or in Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece – because the sound had been totally uncool – started to deal more with these sounds. I’m really talking about brass instruments now, and, I remember there was at some point a project like Zach Condon’s Beirut (Zach lives in Berlin, by the way, you should also interview him) which  transported this brass sound to the alternative scene.

To put it briefly, this experiment with Disko Partizani, BalkanBeats, Bucovina Club was a door opener for migrant music in general, and also the door opener for a completely different attitude and way of life.
And then in combination with electronic music, because what we are talking about has its origins in electronic music, because the biggest democratic leveller is the dance-floor.
There were no marketing campaigns, no labels. The legitimation   took place through the parties. And that was the best multiplier, the parties were awesome. They were extraordinary and  they were unique and flattened everything!
Suddenly techno no longer had any meaning, these boring mainstream chart parties. It was no longer important because of the sound we put out there, everyone could agree on it –  the migrant kids from former Yugoslavia, but also the second generation from Turkey, Greece, even Italy…