It begins like a fairy tale: a newly-formed country, east of Switzerland and west of Turkey, led by a young music-loving president especially keen on electronic music.

President Kadebostan

The country’s called Kadebostany and its president Kadebostan. During a diplomatic tour of Belorussia, Kadebostan stumbles across and makes friends with an accoustic orchestra in Minsk, and since his young nation doesn’t yet have a national ensemble of its own, he takes them on.

Better still, he decides that this troupe must be liked by all his people, that includes every generation. With the help of his computers and samplers, he sets to work and begins to compose music around the recorded parts of the brass section and other instruments in the orchestra. Other musicians stop by the studio to record their solos. “Each time, I tried to push them into their corner for them to find their extreme animal instinct. I try to capture these crazy moments that only happen once”. Always open-minded, the President also recruits Corina for a track, a Romanian beggar that he met on in the streets of Geneva whose reality is 10,000 leagues distant from his own.

For practical reasons, the fanfare settle in Geneva, the town of their label: Mental Groove. In the record shops today, «Songs From Kadebostany» is a musical UFO that continues to increase the group’s popularity. Kadebostan, with his haughty look and dictatorial moustache explains: “I’ve always been an outsider in electronic music”. Before his concert at Le Romandie in Lausanne he tells me: “I like to describe myself as musically illiterate. I can’t read music at all. I’ve got some vague notions of harmony, but I stopped short when I realised that I was about to acquire the skills that would kill off the magic of the moment”.
Refusing all musical labels (techno, folklore, etc..), the National Fanfare of Kadebostany plays on the curiosity and mystery which surround its name and country. After having met with varied audiences from Holland, Germany and Mexico, the band continues along its virtual path. Their new opus has already gone into the best top ten albums on itunes Japan. Their video have reached more than 700’000 views on Youtube.  It gives you a good idea of the energy that this strange national band gives off. You can make them win the best Swiss Video clip  in a competition organized by M4Music and Mx3. The National Fanfare Kadebostany is playing worlwide, including Athens recently. It will also close the Caprices Festival in Crans-Montana on the 16th of March and will play at the Geneva Electron Festival  on the 31st. Be there!

This article was first published on swissvibes.org in french in May 2011. Translation: Beatrice Venturini