Interview
Amy Denio, Gino Srdjan Yevdjevich
SIT & SPIN
Seattle, Washington
29 December 2001

I notice you have some interesting interviews up on your website.
Yeah, we're getting there. We got reviewed by Folk Roots and the next number...the next issue we have an article featuring our interview over there and in the same month we had reviews in Metal Hammer and Kerrang! Magazine so I guess we still need to have, like, pop music....make the Rolling Stone!
So How long have you been doing this particular band...Kultur Shock?
Kultur Shock has been around since 1997-98. It was different. We were a folk-acoustic band but then we started playing restaurants like every folk-acoustic band and then our audience when we started playing restaurants. [problems with mike]. Yeah, Kultur Shock was made in 1997, we actually made a tour with Joan Baez who's a friend of mine...we met in Sarajevo during the wartime. Then we started playing in Seattle. It was a joke, pretty much all of the people who were there, the original drummer from Kultur Shock was there, me and two other guys Lazy and Hajia we were like folk acoustic band and then we started playing restaurants and then our audience...the owners of the restaurants said, behave, so they were starting to jump on the tables and take their shirts and bras off and they started dancing all over the place so we got kicked out of the restaurants so we had to start playing the rock clubs, so here we are.
So that's what this is, a rock 'n roll and laundromat?
Yeah, this is a rock and roll club. This is one of the main clubs in Seattle. You have two more clubs, Crocodile and Tractor that are the best in Seattle.
I'm going to change the subject and I'm going to ask you to go back. A lot of the members of your band are from Eastern Europe. How did you all start...well maybe start at the beginning, how did you start doing music?
I was 9 and I figured out that I have to do something where everybody's gonna watch me.
Is that the truth?
Sure. I had an attention deficit, but not an attention deficit that I had...I wanted attention all the time. So I had the deficit of the attention of the other people disorder. So pretty much at nine I wanted to be on the stage, to act, to sing, to play drums. I started playing drums at that time. Anything, just the stage. Amy?
I like the music part. The stage part is secondary. That's one of the nice things about Kultur Shock, that we draw a very diverse community when we play. A lot of people from eastern Europe, a lot of Americans and a lot of people from all over coming together. That's the part I like the most about the stage watching the mishmash of cultures.
So you have folk dancers and you have...
Flailing hippies, yeah its wonderful.
We have Americans, we have Anarchists coming to our shows. (Laughs) No, we have very diverse audience age-wise and origin wise. Yeah. It's a professional band. The musicians are really professional. Everybody's been doing music a long time and everybody's enjoying doing this music.
OK, I'm going to back up on your life and I'm going to pay attention to Amy in a little while. But go back on your life and talk about the music you were doing in Sarajevo.
Well, I've...at the age of 16 I started playing drums with the teen, no one but a couple of hit wonder and we became...I pretty much, we made it when I was 16 and then made a couple of albums, played for a couple of years...
Which was when?
That was in 1975...and then we were like really...well, we played. Then at the age of 20, 21 I quit that band and started doing my own music, having an interest for doing a little bit more complicated music, so I made my own band and it took me about 4 to 5 years to make it. I thought that industry people were mine, because we were selling a load of CDs...of LPs at the time but I guess when you are not there you are as good as your last performance. So when you're not there, I had to start it all over again. I made it again in 1986 with my band Gino Banana and then we recorded three more albums.
What did Gino Banana sound like?
Well, it was from the album to the album. The first album was kind of jazzy rock and roll, kind of like at that age, in the 80s everybody was trying to sound Sade-like. And then my second album the label because the first one was sold beyond the expectations. The second album was done by the same record label, the record label jump in saying need to do big commercial, so the second one got sold like gold, and the third got sold like gold. Since then I was like Rick Martin. I mean I was like mainstream singer at the time.
Where was this...
It was in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia.
Where was it sold?
In Yugoslavia. It was sold all over Yugoslavia., we're from Yugoslavia. Yeah, until the war started. Then my other outlet was the theater. I was a theater composer at the same time and my alternative outlet was there. So when the war started I realized I don't want to play commercial music anymore because I guess life is too short. In minutes you can get killed as much as...you know, every five minutes you can get killed. So why would you waste your time and do stuff for money? That was my logic and since then I changed.
When did you come over here?
1996. Yeah, I was coming over here in 1994-1995, but 1996 was pretty much [people coming into office problem]
And I had noticed that when I read your web page that the other people in your band belonged to a band called Orion?
That's from Bulgaria. Those two guys are actually from Bulgaria and they emigrated over here. They actually had to do it by the political exile. They evicted, because at the time the Bulgarian..wasn't letting their citizens run away. They were at the San Remo festival, it was on the web page actually. They were at the San Remo festival in Italy and they evicted first to Germany and then to the American Embassy and then to the United States.
So they got political asylum.
Yes it was a long time ago, it was during the communist time.
But you..
No, I just came over here on a cultural exchange visa where my...actually the sponsors were Warner Music International and Universal Pictures. They wanted to make a movie with me. Alden Robinson, director of Field Of Dreams and Joan Baez helped, and that's how I came over here.
Do you want to talk a little bit now?
No! (Laughs) I don't have much to say.
Well, a question might be, you have various instruments that you play. Where are you from, originally?
Well, I grew up in the Detroit area and was from a family of jazz players. Both my parents played upright bass. I'm pretty self-taught on the instruments I play now, which is guitar, bass, saxophone and accordion and singing and when I started touring ten years ago, it was easiest to get gigs in Eastern Europe, so I played a lot in Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, Hungary. So when I was over there I discovered I really love that music more than any other. I find it the most profound soul music. I've been listening to it.
You're not a folk dancer.
No I've never been a folk dancer. So when I heard Kultur Shock was playing I checked them out and in their earlier days they *were* more like a restaurant band, loungey and nice. My friend Jessica started to play with them.
Folk dance band.
Folk dance band, right. And my friend Jessica played with them and she was starting to tour too much so I said I'll be your substitute. So about 2 years ago I joined the group on saxophone and I've been learning a lot of gypsy words...swear words.
<cell phone break>
So who's the woman from Indiana on the album you do?
On the album I do with Kultur Shock?
You're the woman from Indiana.
Oh yeah, that's my voice.
<cell phone break>
You want to talk a little bit about the band right now that you have? I've never seen that range of things put together.
Oh that stuff.
How did you start doing so...
I guess that was all pretty much what we liked to do. You know, like I said in 1992 was the year when I changed and I don't do anything anymore what I don't like to do. And this is pretty much what I like. I *love* folk music. I love our ethnic music. I love that kind of singing. I love heavy metal and I like punk rock also. And I like funk music most of all. I also like jazz very much though I'm giving them a hard time. No not you. But the jazz musicians in our band. When they start playing I say, "no jazz, no!"
Are there specific people who put specific things in?
No, I wouldn't really go into details, because it varies from song to song.
We'll say "We'll try this song." And two guys are from Bulgaria and two guys from Bosnia, they know the same songs, so we check it out at rehearsal and work on arrangements. Either it's a good idea or it doesn't work. We move on. It's a pretty democratic process for arranging.
In that last album do you have a song you particularly like doing?
Do you?
Well, I like Haide Roma...Radio Gitana. Cause that includes what we jokingly say could be the gypsy national anthem. They don't have one.
They don't have a nation. Ha ha!
But if they had a football team, this would be their song. That would be the gypsy national soccer team song.
I honestly don't. I don't really have favorites on this album. I love every single one of them. What do I like the most? I really cant say, because I'm gonna be really sorry tomorrow if I say something.
I like Aide Jano.
Yeh, me too.
Aide Jano is...I don't know if we're gonna do that tonight. We're gonna do some other 7/8s but...you know I like the diversity of this album very much. Its something that nobody did before and we take a big pride in it. And I think we pretty much did a professional job.
Do you think its actually something that nobody's done?
I don't think this was ever done, ever. This...I mean this is what the critics are saying. Why Metal Hammer and Folk Roots Magazine from England, you know, we have never heard something like this before.
You know I haven't either.
So...that's a success.
So is Metal Hammer...
That's a Heavy Metal magazine, but its not a Heavy Metal magazine where like they, Metallica and bands which are like popular heavy metal. No this is like hard core heavy metal.
Black metal...Black metal like really like hard core. So we got reviewed there, we got reviewed in Folk Roots, you know Folk Roots like England. We got Karrang! which is pretty mainstream rock magazine.
Is there actually a political message...or A message?
Sure.
Wanna say what it is?
Sure. There is a message. We do not recognize borders. It's simple. We do not recognize borders, passports...
National boundaries...
Freedom in our opinion is the freedom of...it's a freedom of movement and if being closed is that you're not free then...Being free by the Webster Dictionary is the access to move...all access. Right? Access to all sides so how can a guy with a mustache or a girl without a mustache stand on the border of some country to tell ME if I'm good enough to get there, some kind of immigration police of some country. If I'm good to go somewhere and somebody else is not and so on I do not think that's legal. We do not think that is legal. Freedom and borders...that's not legal. That's limitation of your national born right.
Sounds good to me!
You know, I was personally in the war for 3 years, couldn't leave. I was without water, without electricity and pretty much anything which makes your life like civilized life and trust me you get used to it like this, in 5 minutes, in 60 days I didn't really even remember how electricity looks like. What do I need it for? But I didn't get used to not being able to get out. Ever! So I think that's the idea.
I'm going to change the subject. When you were back in Sarajevo, what kind of music was very popular music?
All the music. We were not under the Iron Curtain so we were pretty much free to do whatever we wanted to do. Everything was there. Pretty much dictated from England, from London. Popular music was pretty much imported from London.
Was there traditional music?
There was traditional music. But I'm trying to talk to some of my friends, folk dancers over here. They need to understand that their grandfathers and grandmothers came to this country and started doing that beautiful music. Life didn't stop over there. We have electrical amplifiers and stuff, There's computers also. Not everybody left. There's still people doing music there. Its played differently. Some people have a hard time listening to us, thinking of that music as pure as shepherd on the hill. A lot of sheeps, you know, with the flute. It's a good idea, but realistically it doesn't exist anymore. Its like computers are everywhere. Our folk music also changed. You know, melody lines are there, but everything else changed. I personally don't like the pop-ization of folk music, but experimentation is my very favorite action.
Do you do something else for a living besides this?
I do a lot of other things for a living. I teach part time at Cornish College of the Arts in the drama department. I do legal work for people for developmental disabilities. I graduated in law a long time ago.
I read that. I wasnt sure if anything you wrote was real, though.
I'll lie. That's good. I'm a doctor!
So how often does this band here perform?
It usually has one a month in Seattle and then we try and get out of town too. And play in the Northwest region. So we've played in Portland and Bellingham so far. We're hoping to cross the border. We'll see how that goes.
Canada, I don't know.
They have a copy of our CD at the borders.
They do. Actually no, I think this side has a copy. I was crossing the border and the name of our CD...I cant say it on the radio, F-U-C-C T-H-E I-N-S. So my car...they always search me at the border. I guess I look like...but you know if I was really a drug dealer I wouldn't look like this. It's stupid. Why would you, I mean how, who normal would look like me and be a drug dealer? Right? Its stupid. No body would be stupid enough to look like me and smuggle drugs over the border. We do our drugs here. Ha ha. FBI. Anyway, they searched my car last time and I'm having fun looking at them searching my car and I had a lot of our CDs back in my truck and I later on discovered that one of them was missing.
Heavy rotation at the border.
At the border listening to it I guess. Yeah, I was very proud at the time. Called every single one of my friends and say "Hey, we just got robbed! One of our Cds was missing."
I cant believe that happened. Why not? Wouldn't you take one? I would. If somebody said "F-U-C-C the Kultur Shock and there's a CD. If I had the authority, I would love to hear the CD. I mean, I understand the interest, definitely.
Do you know people who are interested in having you come up?
Actually we have some offers from Canada. We have an interest in a couple of agencies in Canada and from *our* population over there, I mean the Balkan population in Canada also.
So your still playing to the Balkan...
Pretty much the younger people. I wouldn't say the Balkan Balkan people. Its pretty much the people who remember me from back home doing my music. They are usually quite surprised when they hear this. Its very much like Rick Martin doing something very weird. Imagine if Rick Martin would disappear for 5 years and then come back with some death metal Hispanic version.
Do you listen to death metal then?
No...I don't really listen to music. I hate music.
Oh Gino! No really, I listen to all kinds of music. I like punk rock very much. I like metal. I like ethno music of all origins. I like jazz. I like classical music very much and I had a couple of professional trainings in singing classical music.
I think you have a really nice voice.
Thank you. Music...probably its my fault because I'm all over the place. I'm not talking about music at all, I'm talking about everything else but music, but music...I like music much more than people give me credit for. I am really more into music that I appear. It's maybe the other theatrical side that I do that takes...that calls the attention of the people and maybe they think I'm more into theater than music, but I can say I'm 130% into music also and I do think...I do love music still and you can still do the both, you can still do the theater and the music on a professional level. You don't have to make the choice, one or the other. I like them both, I really like the music and the theater both.

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The Columbia Gypsy