Matane Malit

Matane Malit (Beyond the mountain), Elina Duni's ECM debut, is an homage to Albania. A singer looking at her roots from a present-day vantage point as a musician engaged in improvisational processes. Jazz experience informs her exploration of Balkan folk songs with attention to atmosphere, the shape of the sound, the tactility of the structures, the implications of the words,... It's about serving the song, she explains, and about reclaiming and reinventing it. Duni was just 10 when she left Albania in 1992, and found her route to it's songs only after forays into classical music, blues and jazz standards. I fell in love with the old songs, and discovered that not only could I sing them and feel them but that this was really my voice, emerging in a very natural way. It was as if, it had been waiting to be activated, she says. As a child growing up in Tirana, Duni had had little contact to folk music. Folklore, co-opted by the state, had become agitprop material for socialist themes, and Dunis family like many intellectuals and artists - distanced themselves from it. Now however she began to explore in earnest, digging deeper into the regions troubled history, uncovering many songs of real beauty and power, older songs from her homeland and from it's vast Diaspora. Matane Malit includes songs of lovers, heroes, workers, shepherds, exiles, songs of resistance - traditional songs arranged by Elina Duni and sung in Albanian, and new music expressively molded in the tradition.