BU offers

african and latin-american music and drumming events of all kinds

First You may think: "This is just another of the many offers that try to tell the same story in a different way." But we are not asking You to spend valuable time with too many words, we would only like You to listen:

In the fourth year of performing original drumming music and creating diverse multimedia projects BU are writing a new chapter: after playing almost a hundred gigs, this winter was the first to have been almost entirely spent in the studio. Why not let this unique collective spice up Your evening and stir the audience's primeval rhythms through a blend of highly energetic, yet sublime drumming, powerful electronic visuals, fervent dancing and stunning fire performance?

Traditional rhythms of Central Africa and Latin America form the base of BU's musical texture, yet they are being - sometimes even radically - infused with the group's own understanding of what music and rhythm are all about: from an eclectic appreciation of other traditions and percussion instruments such as darbouka, tapan or didgeridoo to an expermental, even post-modern approach to musical composition and performance strategy. On their tours all over Slovenia, along with an expedition abroad, they appeared at almost all major venues and gained a good reputation as a "band of party animals", since none of the numerous audiences at clubs and festivals would remain cool, once faced with the compelling energy of BU.

Especially their novel musical approach to tradition-as-linked-to-the-present led the group to bold aesthetic and performative investigations, some of them fusing aspects of art and everyday life in truly unexpected ways. The non-verbal street theatre performance "BUsingye" for example communicated a story of love and hate only through drumming, gibberish as well as dancing - and the project is just about to develop into a whole new stage. For more than two years BU have been conducting rhythm-events for the deaf and hard of hearing under the title of "BUmBUs". To an audience combined of people with essentially different abilities and preferences of percepting sound they offer a new way of getting in touch with the world(s) of music: traditional percussions and dancing are complemented by further visual, tactile and kinesthetic media.

Visual materials that are being mixed live on the screen (VJing) by the members of the group not only offer stimulating background aesthetics but also cover themes ranging from traditional life and pure nature to the urban aspects of "other" continents. The sublime vibrations of the traditional Australian instrument didgeridoo wrap up the rather intensive rhythmic front of djembe, dundun, sangpan and kenken, softened in turn by the high-pitched small percussions such as claves, shakers and bells.

As a universal language, music, especially in its "primitive" aspects of rhythm, is doubtlessly capable of tearing down social boundaries and challenging communicational frontiers - such was also the motivation for a series of anti-war actions (NO Nato, Drums not Bombs) and other initiatives in the realms of civil society. Also in 2004 they were pronounced Slovenia's "ambassadors of diversity". The project called "BUdiseja4002" reevaluated BU's previous multimedia experiments and blended them into a journey down the river Ljubljanica, which brought together different elements of natural expression such as music, dancing and visuals, telling a story of the four basic elements (water, air, earth and fire). For two years BU have been collaborating with a group of afro-dancers, sometimes complemented by a troupe of fire-artists for a truly spectacular show.

BU's primeval afrogroove, music of the body and an excess of creative energy guarantee a unique event, where the multi-rhythm is shared among everybody present.