Branko Mataja: "Over Fields and Mountains"
[Numero Group, 2022]
This rediscovered collection of Serbian folk songs plays like the perfect score to a film that never existed. The fictional film that I have in mind is the Serbian-American equivalent of a spaghetti western, with the film’s plot concerning the recuperation of a nameless protagonist at a monastery in the Balkan mountains, after a brutal attack on his home by a band of mercenaries. But the more that I listen, the more that I’m convinced of another narrative at play; one that better reflects the turbulent life of the musician himself. According to David Jakovich, the Croatian-American crate-digger responsible for this new release, Mataja spent his early years building and playing guitars for a living in Belgrade, before the Germans occupied during the Second World War, and he was sent to a slave labour camp. When the Americans liberated his camp towards the end of the war, he survived by working a slew of odd jobs; as a barber, a cook, a black market dabbler, and by playing jazz and R&B in the bars that the soldiers frequented. He met and married a Montenegrin woman in a displaced persons camp in Yorkshire, and, both wary of returning to a much-changed communist Yugoslavia, they migrated to Canada, then Detroit, and finally found their way to their last port of call, Los Angeles. Here, they had a son, and Branko supported the family by establishing a popular guitar shop, spending as much of his free time as possible experimenting and tinkering away on recording techniques in a home studio. He recorded and self-funded the release of two albums of traditional Balkan folk songs for guitar, although bafflingly, according to his son Bata, Branko never played Balkan music at home. Over Fields and Mountains is a compilation derived from these two modest releases.
Mataja’s guitar playing reflects the sentiment of an American immigrant as much as it does a Serb emigrant; the fields and mountains suggested by the title are in the far distance, a hazy memory from life on the other side of the world, and his recording style, with its adept use of tape delay and overdub brings us closer to the world of his later years, the world of innovation and entrepreneurial spirit that is Los Angeles. Most importantly, Mataja’s folk songs are suggestive of a travelling musician first and foremost. There is an order to proceedings on Over Fields and Mountains that evokes the spirit of someone that has used their guitar to pay their way in life on more than one occasion. The songs may not have been Balkan on every occasion, but the approach was surely the same, whether it was a fete in Belgrade, a bar in Berlin, or a campfire on the outskirts of Halifax. The early numbers (“Da Smo Se Ranije Sreli”/“Had We Met Before”, “Susti Bagrem Beli”/“White Blossoms”) gain the audience’s confidence through some mesmerising combination of formal elegance and hypnotic pull. There are some nods from the crowd: “that man over there sure knows how to play”. As the crowd begins to grow, more rhythmic numbers come to the fore, the waltzes and the two-steps, (“Tamo Deleko”/“Far Away”, “Kafu Mi Draga Ispeci”/“Make Me Some Coffee Darling”). The bolder members of the crowd come forward to dance. It’s all leading up to the finale, the spirited “Zapletnicki Capak”/“Caught Up In Capak”, and now even the shyest attendees are up and dancing, there’s money in the pot, even a few banknotes on a good night, and a drunk lieutenant has stumbled over to Branko, and claps him on the back. “Bravo little man! Bravo!”