Biography
Branko Mataja, an inventive musician, producer, and luthier, assembled a 1973 set of abstract guitar meditations drawn from the folk traditions of his Yugoslav homeland; the recordings languished in obscurity until enthusiasts unearthed them in the early 2000s. Numero Group assembled and released a survey of his output, Over Fields and Mountains, in 2022.
Mataja entered the world in 1923 in the Adriatic settlement of Bekar, today situated in Croatia, yet he passed his formative period in Belgrade. Axis occupation of Yugoslavia during World War II led to his conscription into a German labor camp, where he remained for most of the conflict. Following liberation of the camp by American forces, he stayed in Germany, cutting hair by day and performing guitar for U.S. soldiers at night. Granted refugee status in the United Kingdom, he there encountered and wed Roksanda Radonjic, a fellow Montenegrin refugee. After acquiring British citizenship, the couple relocated to Canada in 1954, shifted onward to Detroit in 1963, and established themselves in Los Angeles the next year, at which point Mataja turned his attention fully toward music.
A self-taught luthier and electrical engineer, he constructed his own guitars together with a home recording studio and began exploring overdubbing, tape delay, and track bouncing. Seeking to reclaim cultural roots severed by wartime displacement, he wove the folk melodies of his birthplace into his work. On a self-built electric guitar and four-track recorder he produced atmospheric, hauntingly lovely, and subtly psychedelic interpretations of those longstanding tunes.
He selected his preferred pieces for the 1973 LP Traditional and Folk Songs of Yugoslavia, issued without commercial impact on the modest local imprint Essar Records; a decade afterward he followed with another collection of reframed traditional material, Folk Songs of Serbia, distributed on cassette. Mataja suffered a fatal heart attack in 2000.
In 2005, while crate-digging at a Hollywood shop, musician David Jerkovich encountered a copy of Traditional and Folk Songs of Yugoslavia. Captivated by its arresting cover photograph and its singular sonic experiments, he reached out to Doug McGowan, then affiliated with the specialist reissue concern Numero Group. Across the ensuing fifteen years Jerkovich and McGowan reconstructed Mataja’s biography, aided by his son Bata, and secured the original master tapes of both Traditional and Folk Songs of Yugoslavia and Folk Songs of Serbia. The compilation drawn from those sources, Over Fields and Mountains, appeared in 2022.
Mataja entered the world in 1923 in the Adriatic settlement of Bekar, today situated in Croatia, yet he passed his formative period in Belgrade. Axis occupation of Yugoslavia during World War II led to his conscription into a German labor camp, where he remained for most of the conflict. Following liberation of the camp by American forces, he stayed in Germany, cutting hair by day and performing guitar for U.S. soldiers at night. Granted refugee status in the United Kingdom, he there encountered and wed Roksanda Radonjic, a fellow Montenegrin refugee. After acquiring British citizenship, the couple relocated to Canada in 1954, shifted onward to Detroit in 1963, and established themselves in Los Angeles the next year, at which point Mataja turned his attention fully toward music.
A self-taught luthier and electrical engineer, he constructed his own guitars together with a home recording studio and began exploring overdubbing, tape delay, and track bouncing. Seeking to reclaim cultural roots severed by wartime displacement, he wove the folk melodies of his birthplace into his work. On a self-built electric guitar and four-track recorder he produced atmospheric, hauntingly lovely, and subtly psychedelic interpretations of those longstanding tunes.
He selected his preferred pieces for the 1973 LP Traditional and Folk Songs of Yugoslavia, issued without commercial impact on the modest local imprint Essar Records; a decade afterward he followed with another collection of reframed traditional material, Folk Songs of Serbia, distributed on cassette. Mataja suffered a fatal heart attack in 2000.
In 2005, while crate-digging at a Hollywood shop, musician David Jerkovich encountered a copy of Traditional and Folk Songs of Yugoslavia. Captivated by its arresting cover photograph and its singular sonic experiments, he reached out to Doug McGowan, then affiliated with the specialist reissue concern Numero Group. Across the ensuing fifteen years Jerkovich and McGowan reconstructed Mataja’s biography, aided by his son Bata, and secured the original master tapes of both Traditional and Folk Songs of Yugoslavia and Folk Songs of Serbia. The compilation drawn from those sources, Over Fields and Mountains, appeared in 2022.
Albums
Singles
