Gypsy Devils Rock Salamis!
July 24, 2009 by Essential Ed
Filed under Arts & Culture, See & Do
A real treat occurred at Salamis recently, with the one of the highlights to end the 13th Gazi Magusa International Arts & Culture Festival being a super show by the Gypsy Devils. Salamis can hold around 2,000 people which by the time the band were due to arrive on stage was just slightly short of full. President Mehmet Ali Talat and his wife, First Lady Oya Talat, also arrived for an anticipated great night’s entertainment.
The venue is a really great place to hear some alternative world music, with the amphitheatre providing a unique atmosphere with great acoustics. The Gypsy Devils are a band consisting of eight musicians, headed by Slovakian musician Ernest Sarkozi, an imposing figure of a man! Their musical genre is Gypsy music and not being familiar with this was therefore a great opportunity to sample what it sounded like!
The group proved to be a lively bunch too, and much like watching your favourite rock band for example, they swept you along with the music in much the same way. The main man Ernest also treated many of us to an instrument which we had never heard of before – a Hammered Dulcimer – which led to much whispering, asking if it was a xylophone! Looking this up on Wikipedia it is described as a stringed musical instrument with the strings stretched over a trapezoidal sounding board. The player holds two small mallet type hammers which are then used to strike the board to attain the sounds required. The word dulcimer is a Greco-Roman word meaning sweet song, 
and it’s a very good description as the music that came from it was magical, and at time played at a very frenetic pace!
The other instruments played by the group members included cello, violins, clarinet, contrabass and tarogato, another instrument we had not come across before. Its description is given as a single-reed, conical-bore woodwind, created in Hungary around the turn of the century shortly after the invention of the saxophone. Ernest’s’ wife Silvia, also a member of the group plays the cello and also took a break to woo us with her vocal prowess too.
A mix of compositions was played throughout the one hour, ten minute set including pieces from Jerusalem, Russia, Hungary and France, which although ultimately have Gypsy music at its roots, could easily have been mistaken for major classical ballads. We have to say, even though we are not die hard classical music fans, it was a real treat to see some very talented and successful musicians at work and ones which enjoyed every single note they played for audience.
To round off the evening, Silvia played a little joke with her husband by covering his face and then his hands so that the audience could see the master at work on his dulcimer without what you might suspect would be his essential aids to enable him to play, thus proving a real master has no need for sight to play his instrument.
Salamis amphitheatre was a perfect venue for this event, which did North Cyprus real justice by the amount of people who turned out see this kind of music. The festival ended on 3rd July with popular Turkish star Teoman again packing out the venue for the final performance of the festival.
Another truly successful North Cyprus festival has taken place, and all we need do is look forward to what next years itinerary will bring, but one thing is for sure, North Cyprus can certainly pull in the names!