The Harmonia band of Cleveland, Ohio is composed of six musicians, five of them with roots in Eastern Europe. Today on New American Voices members of the band talk about the appeal of their ethnic music to American audiences.
The music is East European, but the appeal seems to be universal, as Americans of various backgrounds and ages dance to the band Harmonia in a large hall in a Washington suburb. Marko Dreher, the band?s ?primas? or violinist, says he is amazed at how American audiences respond to this ethnic music, whether in dance halls or concert halls.
Marko Dreher?s father, also a musician, is Croatian, while his mother is a native American Cherokee Indian who cooks Croatian food and knows all the Croatian songs. Mr. Dreher is a classical musician, working on his master?s degree in violin and viola performance at the Cleveland Institute of Music. But he says that emotionally he is drawn to the music he heard every day, growing up in multi-ethnic, multi-cultural Cleveland.
Andrei Pidkivka plays the ?sopilka?, a small wooden flute popular in Ukraine, and the pan flute. A classically trained musician from Ukraine, he is perfectly comfortable playing both on a concert stage and on a dance floor.
Andrei Pidkivka teaches classical flute, silver flute and the recorder, and plays with a quartet and different symphony orchestras as well as with Harmonia. Alexander Fedoriuk, another Ukrainian and a graduate of the Kiev Conservatory, plays the cimbalom with Harmonia.
Harmonia?s singer - Beata Begeniova, came to the United States from Presov, a city in Eastern Slovakia. Ms. Begeniova, a slender, animated blond, lives in Cleveland and spends most of the year touring with the band. She says she came to the United States six years ago to learn the language and see the country?and has gotten her wish.
With their musicianship and spirit, the members of the band Harmonia give East European motifs a new life on the American cultural scene.