Press Clippings

Two Serbs that are brothers, at last. When brothers - the Serbs, twins, intertwine their I through their singing, and then they intertwine their YOU, a harmony develops. Ratko and Radiša are adventurers same as any true singers. They are aware that their instrument is within themselves, they try their skills, they dance, intervene unassumingly respecting the personality of the author of a folk song. They prove that a folk song is not a fetish, not a relic, but perpetual liturgical progress of spirit through times.
Those brothers are neither global peasants nor citizens of the world. They are one folk singer reflected in the mirror that, as a duplicated monolith, stands amidst a desert. With their two-part singing they build up a signpost towards the authentic that presumably had to be created somewhere. Naturally, an excitement is audible. It is heard that we are the Euro-Asians, that our mother tongue pertains to the Indo-European languages, and that Europe is just a peninsula of a huge piece of the globe called Asia. Finally, the multicultural feature of the Balkans casts out the caprice on the local level. Attractive in their congenerousness, those two musical men know perfectly well that a song is same as speech in weightless conditions, popular speech in this case. Clear-eyed, with somehow windy hair, they beat about Serbia and listen. Passionately inquisitive, they have composed the map of a country. Kosovo is delineated there, too.

Emilija Radmilović, Republika
 

Their unbelievably harmonized timbre of a doubled voice, having no problems in pronouncing even the most awkward consonants or vocals, like an inexplicable instrument, a voice not exactly clear, sweet-sounding - more like a wind, soul, if describable at all, firm like soil I guess, equally husky, humid, intertwined with thin roots, a voice that masterfully commands the observatories of their throat, elevating into the arches of the being, even more successfully than the most cherubic church choir - it has its foothold in the perfect layout of this clime and flies over it with an aristocratic buoyancy, with the solemnity that cautions.
The Teofilovic brothers are going to turn upside-down many a musical career and definitely remove a stain from the unjustly soiled name of the folk music.

Zorica Kojić, Danas
 

The Teofilovic brothers appertain to the rare people who, contrary to the prevailing trends, remind their own country that there had been other fields of action apart from the minefields in its history. In that noble mission, they are about to turn their career into a treasure trove of genuine wealth, as opposed to many others who have made the treasure troves of banality out of their CVs.

Ivan Ivačković, Vreme
 

The Teofilovic brothers splendidly feel that any time must leave its imprint. Hence they are not only the guardians of our almost forgotten music heritage, and not only its rousers, the Teofilovic brothers are also the authors who etch new lines into the face of the past, making it even more beautiful and richer. By daring to make popular something that is by definition unpopular in our society, something already so distant from its basic values - the authentic folk song, a song that has kept us going through the centuries, they command respect and support of a special kind.

Nevena Vitošević
 

The thinking that a larger ensemble achieves more than a smaller one is wrong... The larger the ensemble, the lesser Serbian music there is. It even obliterates the innermost poetry that features our traditional music, very much present in the singing of the Teofilovic brothers.
Maybe they have been given to us by some higher forces to put across to the world the greatest treasures of our musical heritage. Therefore, the Teofilovic brothers are not only The Dream Guardians but rather a belief in the survival of the Serbian people - through the Serbian musical heritage.

Prof. Zorislava Vasiljević
 

The Teofilovic brothers are totally original, superior, mysterious, fascinating, mystical, unique, and their own masters. There are not in the scorewriting alchemistry, they are returning to the roots, the age-long sound of the heritage, pure source of folk songs that were created several centuries ago. Emergence of those songs is local but their echo is global. The Teofilovic brothers are not the musicians with diplomas and yet their role is missionary.
They are the holiday and the festivity of a song. Powerful, inspiring, and emotional. Well- trained, with virtuosity, sonorous perfection in singing.

Karolj Kovač

The brothers carry within them a code for deciphering of the beauty of the heritage of the hot-blooded Balkans. With their sensuality they have solved the mystery and demonstrated that the beauty is definitely not complicated, unassuming, full, and subtly imposing.
Each time when I hear them in reality, I sinfully exist in a single feeling: pride!

Bojana Gnjatić

They are a true sound of a spiritual power of our folk songs, particularly the lyric ones. Those are the primordial voices of hardships, ups and downs of Serbia.

Radomir Andrić
 

The Teofilović twins have made an important step in the direction of moulding a new musical voice, a modern ethnovocal orchestration. Their approach to our musical heritage shows how new generations of young people - living in sky-scrapers, in a video and computer environment - can accept the challenge of their musical and vocal roots, and, in a sense, turn them into a starting point for their creative abilities. On the other hand, by their choice and sequence of songs, the Teofilović twins tell us their version of the eternal tale about human search for purpose and beauty in all their diversity. Pondering for ages on the purpose of life, man has discovered the beauty of this search.

Professor Nenad Ljubinković
 

The powerful breath of the Teofilovic brothers was so gentle that the audience in the small chapel of San Carlo de Montichelo, fascinated by the magic humming of these Serbian singers, was careful not to desecrate that unexpected spell.
The Siamese voices from Serbia seem to be the only memory of love, "never political" repertoire ... The songs about love and parting, sung about in a single breadth although in a language not understood, still excite the listeners.
The harmonies are there to keep the melody line down to the ground, to prevent it from flying off too far away. They found that spiritual trait in the Corsican polyphonies, shared by their voices arriving from the opposite side.

Sesil Kaznav
 

If I were offered a trip, I would like to go with the Twins to Kosovo, to hear them singing there in the old Orthodox churches or to attend a wedding ceremony of the Goranians, those Muslim Slavs whose music the Teofilović brothers are trying to rescue from oblivion since that culture is gradually vanishing... Such a trip is now too dangerous for the Serbs, even when they sing so grandly/magnificently as the Teofilović brothers do.

Patrick Graham

The Teofilovic brothers enrich the music scene of the Serbian culture by bringing back the music into the national musical credo, the one by which the Serbian spirit has liberated the Serbian national being.

Ljubivoje Jovanović

It is our duty to be the mediators
between the past and the present,
in Serbia, our origin and our choice,
through the primordial sound
we all bear somewhere deep in ourselves.

The Teofilović brothers