The Five Star Family Elan

Event information

The Five Star Family Elan

As part of the commissions for RECON festival (www.reconfest.co.uk) Bradford-based psychedelic world-folksters The Family Elan collaborate with South Asian musicians from the Five Star Academy, Bradford.

The Family Elan, active since 2007, is the musical project of the Greek bouzouki and Turkish baglama-saz player Chris Hladowski. Born and bred in Bradford Hladowski has taken his music with him for stints in Glasgow, Budapest and London, and tours across Europe and the USA, collaborating with groups as diverse as A Hawk and A Hacksaw, members of the seminal German ‘krautrock’ band Faust, Franz Ferdinand, and the Master Musicians of Joujouka. A rotating membership has recently seen him joined by Harry Wheeler on bass and Mark Hearne on percussion. Having collaborated with the Jaipur Kawa Brass Band for a successful and memorable concert at the Delius Arts and Cultural Centre, in conjunction with Oriental Arts, in September 2012, the group continues its search for a cross-cultural musical ferment that is both honest and well seasoned.

Based in Bradford since 1974 Tazeem Khan and Qawwal Party boasts some of the foremost Pakistani and British-Pakistani musicians living in the north of England, performing a form of Islamic Sufi devotional music that stretches back over 700 years. Having won first prize in the Pennine Radio competition as long ago as 1981 the group confidently lays claim to being West Yorkshire’s first established Qawwali group, having performed for both the Asian diaspora community – at weddings and traditional ‘mehfils’ (musical gatherings) – as well as for the wider public, at venues as diverse as the Bradford Mela, Oxford University, and as far afield as Australasia and the Arab Gulf. Featuring Tazeem Khan’s impassioned singing, accompanied by the voices, harmoniums, tablas, and dhols of his talented musical entourage, these are the kind of sounds to let your spirit take wings.


Hailing from Jhelum, in the north of the Punjab province in Pakistan, Sagir Ali Khani has been a regular visitor to the UK for a number of years. He is a virtuoso shenhai player (an ‘oboe-like’ double reed wind instrument), who also happens to be a master dhol (a double ended folk drum), tabla, harmonium, bamboo flute, and exquisite singer.

7 – 9pm. £3 in.