Over het album

Great things can be created in art when diligence and effort meets passion and skill. In Toka Incognita (Toka = Albanian for Terra/world), all ingredients are combined to create something great: time for compositions: most of them are by Eda Zari; a sense for melodies and songwriting; solid knowledge of one's own music roots as well as openness to current trends; intelligent arrangements specifically for the hand-picked musicians for this project; and recordings without time pressure in an excellent studio with just as outstanding technicians.  The overriding feature encompassing the 12 songs is formed by Eda Zari's most important source of inspiration: the iso-polyphonic art of singing in her native home Albania as it is cultivated above all in the south till today. However, the special and unique feature is produced by Zari's adaptation of the material into her personal world of music, in which there is also a lot of room for jazz and other popular trends as well as for various rhythmic structures in addition to those typical for the Balkans. A world of music is created, which is probably "Toka Incognita" like the native country of the musicians. But that is precisely what makes this music so exciting and challenges our curiosity! Together with an excellently trained voice, which is never "oversophisticated" but instead full of individual charisma and a high degree of emotional intensity, Toka Incognita is an impressive witness to a living "world music", which also is deserving of this name. It combines different cultures in music, which can otherwise be very different. This is something, which probably only a person can achieve who has experienced both as intensively as Eda Zari.