Womad

Svetlana Spajić with Andrew Cronshaw

Serbian songbird joins eclectic European folk summit

Take a traditional Serbian singer, a British maestro of the zither, an Australian multi-instrumentalist and an Armenian duduk virtuoso, and you have one of the most fascinating boundary-crossing experiments of this weekend. Serbia's Svetlana Spajić has spent many years tracking down traditional songs and singing styles in villages across the Balkans and has worked with the First Traditional Balkan Ensemble and the Belgrade-based group Drina. Zither king Andrew Cronshaw's roots lie deep in British folk music although he has spent the last decade and more exploring other European folk traditions and, in particular, the music of Finland. They are joined on the Radio 3 stage by two of Cronshaw's long-standing musical collaborators, Ian Blake (saxophone, clarinet etc) and the duduk player Tigran Aleksanyan. If you're wondering whether such a disparate conglomeration can really work, an eloquently beautiful track recorded by the quartet last year and now available as a free download on Andrew's MySpace site says the answer is a resounding 'yes'.

Biog by Nigel Williamson