GG Halilaj

Bekim Halilaj drives a lorry between Gjirokastër and Tirana, and sings iso-polyphony with four men he has sung with since school. His part is the second voice, the one that holds the drone: a single note, held steady, while everything else moves around it. They have done it at festivals in four countries and the lorry pays for the travel. Backgammon fills the depot yards and the long evenings between rehearsals. At the board he cannot hold anything steady at all. He doubles when the feeling arrives rather than when the position does, and he is never quiet about how it turns out. Whatever discipline the drone asks of him, he leaves it in the rehearsal room. The chips go the same way. He can hold one note for four minutes and cannot hold a stack through a single evening at the cash tables. He is warm to everybody he plays and takes it worst of anybody in the tier when it goes wrong, and the two are the same trait: he is entirely without a guard, at the table and on a stage.