Toke-Cha band (TokeCha) is one of the most well-known Russian bands playing ethnic and electro-ethnic music.
Musicians named their style “Modern Ethnic Music”. This is a collection of rhythms played on ethnic drums, beatbox, guttural (throat) singing, eastern, African and Russian singing, sound processing and over 300 musical instruments from around the world. All instruments are the band’s personal collection.
The sounding of Toke-Cha is very modern as the musicians blend in perfect harmony such styles as BreakBeat, Drum’n’bass, Trip-Hop, Hip-Hop and Ambient with Folk and Ethnic music complemented by musical instruments and singing from around the world.
The band gave its first concert in 2001 in its native city of Moscow. Since then its popularity has grown continuously. Toke-Cha has been an honored member of major festivals and TV shows, its music is used in soundtracks to many films and theatre performances.
The leader and founder of Toke-Cha is Bulat Gafarov, composer and multi-instrumentalist.
Bulat professionally plays more than 300 musical instruments, such as electro-acoustic violin, various percussions, drums, didgeridoo, kalimba, flutes, vargans, gamelan, topshur, ocarinas, accordions, morin khuur, xylophone, yochin, koto, sitar, vocal (guttural, eastern, African, Russian singing, beatbox), synthesizers and other instruments.
During concerts, Bulat often plays several musical instruments simultaneously, so people would call him “The Orchestra Man” (one-man band)
The initial concept of Toke-Cha music was “Green Music”, or eco-friendly music. That gave the name to its first album – “Phytogenic Music”, recorded in 2002 at “TRec Studio”.
Later four more albums have been recorded: “The Shaman's" (2003), “Live 2004”, a multimedia disk “Live 2005” and "On Line" (2006, soundtracks and live performances).
At the moment the band is editing a new double album - “Eclecticus”.
Toke-Cha works closely on various projects with theatres, dancing shows, sand and fire shows.
On the band’s official web-site www.toke-cha.com you will find samples of music, video and photos, detailed information about the band and its musical instruments, as well as announcements of upcoming events.
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