Fatmire Breçani | Fatmire Breçani

Freshly reupped here.

[Originally posted January 8, 2012.]

As I said in an earlier post, there are two kinds of shop keeps: Those who are thrilled to find someone besides their usual customers combing through their tapes and CDs and those who--

Every single guy who works in the Albanian bodega on Church Avenue a few blocks from my apartment is friendly, helpful and talkative--until you ask about the music on the wall behind them.

"Thees museek NOT for you."

[extreme sarcasm] "What you like? You speak Albanian, yes?" [/extreme sarcasm]

"I don't know thees music. You don't know? I don't know."

[extreme disgust] "Just tell me WHEECH one." [/extreme disgust]

"I cannot halp you."

Given the looks some of these guys would give me, you would think I was asking them which hand to use when wiping my ass with pages from the Koran. So, how, then, did I ever manage to amass my SuperPosse of Albanian pop CDs, given this gauntlet?

I'm not altogether sure. I know I faked it a couple of times:

"No--I really--[cough]--I especially like Dava [mumbles unpronounceable last name], do you have anything else by her?"

I even tried telling the truth now and then:

"I just--I LOVE music from around the WORLD ... including Albania."

I know nothing about Fatmire Breçani other than she has one of the most powerful voices I've ever heard. And I've put her song "Ani Rushe Ruxhes Kush O Ma Ka Pa" (the 4th track on the playlist above) on nearly every mix-tape CD I've ever made anyone.

I haven't, though, been back to the Albanian bodega since well before Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008. Maybe they've chilled out a bit since then?