Shantel & Bucovina Club Orkestar

Shantel & Bucovina Club Orkestar

Shantel & Bucovina Club Orkestar is a Germany-based group led by Shantel and Our Man From Odessa. The project develops out of Shantel’s Bucovina Club nights and recordings, which combine South-European and Balkan music with club-oriented electronics. It is associated with a live band format as well as DJ sets, and it performs across clubs and festivals.

Background and sound

Shantel begins as an electronic music producer before turning to East European music after a trip to the Bucovina region, now split between Ukraine and Romania, where his mother’s family comes from. That visit leads to the creation of the Bucovina Club concept and to a style built from Balkan brass, traditional melodies, dance rhythms and electronic production. The music draws on forms such as kolo, hora and cocek, and the project treats the region’s traditions as material for club music rather than folk revival.

The Bucovina Club nights become known for mixing these elements into a sound that attracts mixed audiences and helps establish a wider Balkan-electronic scene. Shantel’s work also influences live acts sometimes described as Balkan rock or gypsy punk, which combine Balkan music with rock, hip hop and reggae.

Releases and productions

Shantel releases two albums on Studio K7 in the late 1990s before developing the Bucovina Club series. The Bucovina Club albums appear in 2003 and 2005 and include tracks by leading Balkan bands alongside Shantel’s own original pieces and remixes. His remix of Taraf de Haïdouks is among the notable examples, made for Crammed’s Electric Gypsyland remix series.

He also works as producer on albums by other artists, including Mahala Rai Banda and Boom Pam. His remix of Mahala Rai Banda’s “Mahalageasca” is used in the soundtrack to Borat.

Disko Partizani

Disko Partizani! brings together Shantel’s work as producer, musician and DJ in a set of catchy, energetic pop songs. The album uses a wide range of voices and languages, including English, Romanian, Serbian, Rom and songs in Turkish and Greek. It features a large group of collaborators, among them Vesna Petkovic, Marko Markovic, Filip Simeonov, Jannis Karis, François Castiello, Brenna MacCrimmon, Vladimir Karparov, Sashko Wladigeroff, Costas Ramos, Marcus Schumacher, Ruth Maria Renner as Miss Platnum, Kurt Bauer, Lothar Lässer, members of Boom Pam, Yuriy Gurzhy, Roy Paci, Ken Taylor and Mantiz.

Shantel and his studio partner Marcus Darius form the core of the project on the album, with Darius on drums and Shantel singing, programming, guitar, percussion and keyboards. Essay Recordings, Shantel’s label, and Crammed release the record together.

Roots and themes

The project draws on the history and cultural mix of pre-war Bucovina, including the old capital Czernovitz, which inspires Shantel through its writers and musicians such as Rose Ausländer, Paul Celan, Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger and Josef Schmidt. The music also reflects an interest in migration, borrowing and exchange across cultures. Shantel presents the sound as an interface between east and west, combining older melodies and rhythms with modern trans-European pop.

Recognition and performances

The Bucovina Club albums earn several awards, including a BBC World Music Award. Shantel writes the original music for Fatih Akin’s The Edge of Heaven, which wins an award at the Cannes Film Festival in 2007. He also performs at major festivals and clubs across Europe and has Bucovina Club residencies in Istanbul, Rome, Vienna, Zürich and several German cities.

In November 2004, he performs in Czernovitz with the Jewish Orchestra of Czernovitz and musicians of Mahala Rai Banda in a homecoming concert on the former Austria Square, in front of a crowd of ten thousand people.