‘The music is so good that it doesn’t need jazzing up’

Joe Boyd and Andrea Goertler talk sevdah, saze and the Gjirokastër Folk Festival.

Nicholas Tochka: There was no blueprint for how to manage culture in a socialist society

Ethnomusicologist talks Ardit Gjebrea, cultural production in Hoxha’s Albania and saxophones. 

Ani Gjika: If I don’t write this, who will?

Albanian-American poet and translator talks about her newly released memoir. 

John Hodgson: Out of spite I started learning Albanian

1980s Prishtina and translating Ismail Kadare.

Mladen Kovačević: Even doctors forgot what it looked like

Serbian director talks about his recent film on the 1972 smallpox outbreak in Kosovo.

‘Besa’ – A bid at Balkan Noir

Serbian series about Albanian mobsters finds audiences in Prishtina and Belgrade.