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| Hava Bekteshi playing Çiftelia |
In the Elbphilharmonie, in Hamburg, I performed with the Çiftelia under the sounds of my beautiful Albanian song "The Çiftelia's wire sounds!" (Alb: Tingellon teli i Çiftelisë). Thus, the couple was seen and heard for the first time in such a magnificent concert", said Hava Bekteshi for the show Gjurmët on RTV Alb Se.
Hava Bekteshi is an economist from the town of Neustadt near Hamburg, Germany. She migrated from then Macedonia to Germany, with her parents, when she was just a 14-year-old girl.
Indigenous Albanian music and the most famous Albanian instrument, Çiftelia, has always been an integral part of leisure in the house where Hava grew up. In this way, this instrument has become since early childhood a mean of expressing feelings, longing, and pain, even for Hava.
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| Hava while being interviewed by ALBSE television |
Over time, her Çiftelia has passed the walls of her home and family, occupying more and more space in schools, orchestras, artists, and everywhere where the Albanian economist has found the opportunity to make known this part of the Albanian tradition.
"When we came to Germany I always wanted to do something, to move on. Until I found myself and adapted the formula to a cultural and artistic group called the "Emigrants". It was a very cultured group, but then the group broke up and I made a stop because I started my studies. The Çiftelia remained a passion. Then I think it was a matter of fate, in the area where I lived many communities and some Germans had come up with the idea to form a festival and wanted to find someone to present Albanian music. I do not know where they heard that I was playing music, but they contacted me. At first I was very skeptical, then I accepted and this is the moment when it all started. It was that path where I realized that the Çiftelia could also become part of a German audience. The first performance in front of the German public was really a moment that I thought no one would like, but in fact, they liked it a lot. Then the projects brought other projects. Then I participated in the "New Hamburg Festival" and there the curiosity was great and I was welcomed and the Çiftelia is being liked. Then an organizer wrote to me about the Philharmonic concert and I competed. I was introduced with our instrument Çiftelina, they then accepted me. The director, seeing that I always take the Çiftelina with me, decided that the Çiftelina would become part of the instruments in the concert.”
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| Çiftelia instrument |
Hava Bekteshi also shows the many projects where she has participated: “I have participated in various festivals, in collaborations with musicians of different genres where I have always included the Çiftelina. Then I developed projects with German students, projects in theaters, as in the German Theater Deutsches Schauspielhaus but also outside Germany, in cities like Venice, Lyon, etc."
As she talks about the end of the year, she says that she hopes that 2021 will be a better year.