Natchez Thrace

[Bart Elliott]

I've been working with a group of musicians for over a year now, and from that I formed a trio called  http://www.natchezthrace.com]Natchez Thrace .

What's with the name, Natchez Thrace? Well, it is a play on words, taken from Natchez Trail ... a historical path that extends roughly 440 miles (710 km) from Natchez, Mississippi to Nashville, Tennessee, which essentially links the Tennessee's Cumberland River with the Mississippi River. It was created and used for centuries by Native Americans, and was later used by early European and American explorers, traders and emigrants in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Our group is an instrumental trio that performs the folk music of southeast Europe, historically known as Thrace, which comprises Greece, Bulgaria, and Turkey. Since we all live in Nashville, we connected Natchez Trail with the Thrace music, coming up with our group's name, Natchez Thrace.

You already know about me, so I don't need to go into my background. I will say that with the trio, I'm predominantly playing darbuka, a goblet drum made of metal used in the Thrace region. The darbuka essentially looks like a giant doumbek. I sometimes play some tambourine, tar and doumbek, but mostly just the darbuka.

The other members of the trio ...

Nermin Begovich, born in the city of Travnik, located in Central Bosnia. Nermin is a skilled musician, playing accordion (and a little bit of singing) in the group. He's also a fantastic classical guitarist.

Michael Lewandowski plays mandolin in the group. Besides studying with several mandolin masters, Michael has also studied North Indian Hindustani classical music,  North African Andalus classical music, and Turkish / Arabic classical music.

The music we play in Natchez Thrace is odd-meter heaven. It is extremely rare to play something in 4/4 or 3/4, and if we do, it's very syncopated. It seems like we play almost every time signature in existence, although we most do not. A sample list of meters include: 5/4, 5/8, 6/8, 7/8/, 7/16, 9/8, 9/16, 10/8, 11/8, 12/8, 13/16, 14/8, 15/16, 18/8, 22/16, and 25/16. Fun!  8)

We hope to start doing some traveling, playing a regional cultural arts festivals as well as colleges and universities.

Today, we make our official debut at the Tennessee State Fair, performing this evening on the Festival of the Nations stage (6:15pm till 10:35pm).

[Tim van de Ven]

Sounds like a cool project, Bart; I look forward to seeing some video posted here soon!  ;D