11/08/2024

You know, when you go to an Albanian wedding or a joyous occasion and immediately your hands merge to clap in sounds of happiness and celebration, and you know when the accordion starts to play, your feel you feet head to the stage and go hand in hand with all the things to toast for, and you know when the music starts and we all sing wholeheartedly the songs that have raised us, hav= foretold our worries, reliefs and togetherness for generations: we feel like we know that in this time and place and context, we belong, we learn how to remind ourselves what makes the human spirit thrive and sing and dance. Yeah, that’s the Albanian spirit.

The bliss that is Orkestra Shkodra, marks at the same time the luck we have to listen to this musical gems that have traveled through time and time again from our houses, and we have taken with them everywhere we have traveled in the world, because it speaks to us in the language of time that never ceases to connect us with our identity, 

This edition of DokuFest had a keen focus on the issues of identity with having special programs for stories coming from countries in a state of war, in reflecting what the last half of the century has shaped the language with which we speak and refer to the other, and especially with how we will deal with our futures. In connection to many traditions, the bells rang loudly to understand once and for all that the past is there to teach what the future will hold for us. 

Maybe we won’t know the way immediately, but that is why we will always have songs and poetry to remind us of the human force that has persisted through time, in telling us that we are here to stay in peace and sing for the lives we want to have.

Agim Molla, whose life has been shaped by music like no other in Shkodra, who knows by heart more than 300 Shkodran songs of celebration and has sang his heart out to love and unions was at Lumbardhi Bahce bringing the quintessential Albanian aheng to the closing of the XXIII edition of DokuFest. 

Orkestra Shkodra brings the great Agim Molla, and the likes of Mukades Çanga, an exceptional singer, together with the younger generation of singers, and with Edit Pula(j)’s efforts have made it to the produce the recordings of the album “Si bylbylat në pranverë”  bringing the songs of the weddings in one amazing and masterful compilation. For more information on the production head here.

The songs of Shkodra have a profound attachment to the city life, the life we observe and learn from, that create the time remnants of what we used to be. The poetry in these songs is soft, pure and inviting either in companionship, or in dance, or in love. 

See you in next year’s DokuNights, until then, we await for all the butterflies to reshape a new order of events, to keep us in the roads where lights show us the stage and where the stage makes places for dreams to happen. 

By: Blerina Kanxha

Photo: Agon Dana