Ardit Gjebrea's Projekt Jon

As market reforms were transforming citizenship in post-socialist Tirana, Albania, and Europe transitioned into its post-socialist state, Projekt Jon (1997) interrogated European identity formation . The resulting muzike e lehte (light music), with regional and wider-European influences, reflects an ideal undermined by political unrest and uncertainty. Projekt Jon -the Ionian Project-announces itself with the frenetic beating of the tupan and the traditional cries of Albania''s highland shepherd. The sprawling collaboration between singer-songwriter Ardit Gjebrea, traditional singer Hysni Zela, and a team of crack studio musicians in Italy, had an outsized ambition: to transcend Albania''s borders, imaginatively crafting in sound a new home in Europe for the post-socialist citizens of the embattled nation-state. But as Gjebrea prepared to take the album on tour, the homeland itself verged on the cusp of complete collapse. A civil war, the result of the cascading failure of pyramid schemes enabled by deep political corruption and massive social dislocations, loomed, and the tour became-at least for Gjebrea and other urban intellectuals-a referendum on the future of Albania.>

Product details

• Authors: Nicholas Tochka
• Assisted by: Fabian Holt (Editor)
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 01.01.2024
• EAN: 9781501363061
• ISBN: 978-1-5013-6306-1
• No. of pages: 160
• Dimensions: 126 mm x 196 mm x 10 mm
• Series: 33 1/3 Europe
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Music > General, dictionaries; Individual composers & musicians, specific bands & groups, MUSIC / Individual Composer & Musician, MUSIC / Genres & Styles / Folk & Traditional, Folk & traditional music, Albania, EU (European Union), Musicians, singers, bands and groups, Traditional and folk music