An Albanian singer who was raised in Switzerland, Elina Duni teamed up over a decade ago with pianist Colin Vallon at music studies at the Hochschule der Kunste in Berne. Her second album for ECM applies an open-ended jazz sensibility to Albanian traditional song.
Duni’s second album for the renowned ECM label - the title Dallëndyshe translates as ‘the swallow’ - deals in love and exile and emotions that cut to the quick. Damn them all Yiber, the years you had to emigrate, run just two of the lines from the song, Yiber, which are typical enough of the spirit of the record. Duni's quartet comprises the aforementioned Colin Vallon on piano, Patrice Moret on double bass and Norbert Pfamamatter on drums.
The record begins with a pair of original songs, the first of which Fëllënza (The Partridge) is the perfect vehicle for Duni's keen sense of pathos, although there seems to be nothing particularly poignant about the lyrics. Are these seemingly harmless lyrics about a partridge coded for some more admonitory message, you can't help but ask.
In terms of the tone of her almost preternatural Balkan regret, Duni is not unlike her Greek contemporary Savina Yannatou, another great singer whose work is also released on ECM. Fëllënza is a thing of absolute beauty, as Vallon veers away spiritedly on jazz-inflected piano, was a beguiling counterpoint to Duni’s passionate vocal motif.
The album comes with a useful 20-page booklet which includes the lyrics reproduced in English and Albanian. It cannot be easy to marry Albanian traditions with contemporary jazz, and the challenge could be even greater when only one of the personnel involved - the singer - is Albanian. However, the musicians bring striking empathy to the project and Vallon’s piano in particular appears initimately connected with the rueful expressiveness of the Tirana-born singer. This is readily manifest on beautiful exercises like Ylber and Unë në kodër, ti në kodër.
Paddy Kehoe
