- country:Netherlands
- region:Balkan
- style(s):Balkan, Rembetiko
- label:Smoked Records
- type:Band
- gender:male
- instrumentation:instrumental, vocal
- artist posted by:AsiaNetwork
Parne Gadje frontman and bandoneon player Marc Constandse met with his calling 20 years ago while working in a travelling circus. He was playing percussion in the circus band when one of his colleagues handed him a cassette of a Romanian gypsy ensemble, changing his outlook on music forever - "When I heard that tape I thought this is it This sound has everything in it joy, sorrow, suffering everything - it's all there I knew then exactly which way I had to go with my music, it was so bleedin' obvious"
Until then Constandse had been involved in 'industrial punk bands' and 'extreme theatre outfits' but that tape precipitated a radical change of direction for him. It triggered a quest for the obscure and beautiful that would lead him to artists like the Russian troubadour Alexej Dimitrievitch, the great Romanian vocalist Maria Tanase and the Greek composer Manos Hadjidakis. It would also introduce him to the Rebetiko the dissident sound of the 1930's Greek underworld and Rroma music in all its ornate forms from the sub-continent to the New World.