A 12 Piece Romanian Brass Band Is Squeezing Into The Jam Jar In Bristol Tonight, 30 Years After They Were Found

Fanfare Ciocărlia are at The Jam Jar in Bristol tonight, Tuesday 6 October, and if the name does not ring a bell, the sound probably will. They are a Romani brass band from a tiny village in north-eastern Romania, they play faster than any brass band has a right to, and this tour marks 30 years since a German music fan wandered into their village and decided the rest of the world needed to hear them. The catch is that the Jam Jar has already sold out.

When And Where, And The Ticket Situation

• Date: tonight, Tuesday 6 October 2026
• Venue: The Jam Jar, Little Ann Street, Bristol, BS2 9EB
• Doors: 7pm, finishing at 10pm, with the band likely on around 9.30pm going by their last show here
• Tickets: sold out. Face value was £25.50 on Headfirst, or around £29 to £32 with fees on DICE
• Support: still to be announced

Called 30 Years Brass On Fire, the tour has Bristol as its second UK stop after Coventry. It is also the band’s second time at the Jam Jar, after a show there in October 2024 that the venue billed as their Bristol debut.

The Village They Come From

Zece Prăjini is not a place many people outside Romania will have heard of, and that is more or less the whole story. Around 80 Romani farming families live there, in a valley where the dirt roads are shared with geese and horse and carts, and the year still runs on the seasons.

Being that cut off meant the village stayed hidden right through the communist years. And somehow the old Ottoman tradition of brass bands playing for armies, weddings and funerals carried on there, long after it had died out across the rest of Romania. The players learned it from their fathers and grandfathers, which is how most of them still describe it.

How A German Music Fan Found Them In 1996

Henry Ernst was a young German music fan who walked into Zece Prăjini in 1996, heard the band, and realised what he had found. A year later, in 1997, they were playing across Europe.

If you are wondering about the name, it translates as lark’s song. Fanfare is the word for a brass band.

From Europe they went on to the USA, Japan and Australia, and the band reckons they have now played over 4,000 concerts. They call themselves the hardest working band in the blow business, which after 4,000 shows is hard to argue with.

Why People Say Nobody Plays Brass This Fast

Speed is the thing everybody mentions the first time they hear them. Breakneck tempos, technical playing that does not seem possible on those instruments, and a sweet and sour sound on the horns that does not really match any other brass band anywhere.

The Times described it as a heavy, heavy monster sound, and that is about right. It is not polite wedding music. The crowds they pull are a strange mix, punks and metal fans next to jazz and funk people and world music regulars, and gigs tend to turn into parties fairly quickly.

Borat, Head On And The James Bond Theme

Plenty of people have heard Fanfare Ciocărlia without knowing it.

• Borat: Sacha Baron Cohen commissioned them to record Born To Be Wild and Just The Two Of Us for the Borat soundtracks
• Head On: they turn up playing Hamburg’s clubs in Fatih Akin’s film
• Iag Bari: Ralf Marschalleck’s film follows them on tour across Europe
• Covers: their versions of the James Bond Theme and Duke Ellington’s Caravan show what they do to any tune they get hold of

They have also put out 12 albums, several of which went to the top of the European world music charts, and their tour film Brass On Fire was praised by Songlines magazine.

A 12 Piece Band In A Small Room

The Jam Jar’s own listing for their last visit called them a 24 legged Balkan brass beast, which works out at 12 musicians on stage. The Jam Jar is a club, not a theatre, so that is a lot of brass in not a lot of space.

That is honestly the reason the room sold out rather than everybody waiting for a big festival slot. Hearing them in a hall with seats is one thing, but standing a few metres from a tuba playing at that speed is something else. Earplugs are not a bad idea.

If You Have Not Got A Ticket

Returns do sometimes come back through Headfirst or DICE in the last few hours, so it is worth a look before setting off, and either of those keeps you at face value rather than resale prices.

Otherwise the tour is still moving.

• 7 October: Manchester, Band on the Wall
• 8 October: London, The Steel Yard
• 9 October: Leeds, The Warehouse
• 10 October: Edinburgh, The Biscuit Factory
• 11 October: Glasgow, Classic Grand
• 13 October: Liverpool, Arts Club Loft

Leeds and Glasgow were £24.50 on DICE and Liverpool £26.54 when checked. Bristol was the only South West date on this run, so for anybody near the M5 the nearest alternative now is London on Thursday.