Ardit Gjebreas 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.>

Préface
Discusses the album that mixes traditional folk music with an Italian pop sensibility and what that means about European identityjust as market reforms were transforming citizenship itself in postsocialist Tirana.

Auteur
Nicholas Tochka is Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology at the University of Melbourne in Australia. He is the author of Audible States: Socialist Politics and Popular Music in Albania (2016) and Rocking in the Free World: Popular Music and the Politics of Freedom in Postwar America (2023).

Texte du rabat

As market reforms and migration transformed Albania in the early 1990s, Ardit Gjebrea began mixing traditional folk music with world music and Italian pop. The resulting album, Projekt Jon (1997), provided a new model for song-Western and cosmopolitan, yet firmly rooted in the fertile soil of the nation-against a backdrop of deepening political uncertainty about the very future of Albania. The Ionian Project announced itself with the frenetic beating of the daullë and the traditional cries of Albania's highland shepherd. This sprawling collaboration between singer-songwriter Ardit Gjebrea, folk singer Hysni Zela, producer Paul Mazzolini, and a team of crack studio musicians in Italy, had an outsized ambition: to transcend the small postsocialist nation-state's borders, imaginatively crafting through sound a new home in Europe for its citizens. But as Gjebrea prepared to launch Projekt Jon, violence prompted by the collapse of widespread pyramid schemes threatened to tear Albania apart. And for the intellectuals concerned about growing cracks in the symbolic foundations of the Albanian nation-state, the album came to serve as a referendum on the nature of postsocialist citizenship.

Contenu
List of Figures Track Listing Preface and Acknowledgments Intro Projekt 1. Antennas 2. Borders 3. Markets 4. Troubles Coda Jon Notes Sources Index