This Record Changed My Life: Sweetie Zamora

Sweetie | Bloods
Bela Bartok – Romanian Folk Dances 

This isn’t so much a record that changed my life… but more of a piece of music that changed the way I thought about playing my instrument.

I started learning the violin at age four and studied it seriously all the way though till the end of school. We always played the beautiful and well known classical pieces… the likes of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, Pachelbel’s Canon, Corelli’s Christmas Concerto.

My violin teacher came into a lesson one day with Bartok’s Romanian Folk Dances. It was stunning… but it was so different from anything that I’d ever played and heard before. There was a whole dance just using harmonics, there was playing with the bow and plucking the strings at the same time, some parts on the lower stings were played with more pressure and the sound was kind of crunchy.

It was beautiful but it was rough… and it was that roughness that I’d never encountered before and gave the work such character. I didn’t realise it at the time, but it was perhaps the most punk rock moment to ever happen to a classical violinist.

Bloods’ EP Golden Fang is out now through SHOCK