Džambo Aguševi Orchestra

The Džambo Aguševi Orchestra is a brass band from Strumica in North Macedonia, led by the trumpeter Džambo Agušev. Its music is mostly instrumental: Balkan, Romani and Turkish brass built on the traditions of the southern Balkans, mixed with swing, jazz, funk, pop and film music.

Džambo Agušev was born in 1987 in Strumica into a family of musicians. His father Džemal played in local orchestras, and in the mid-1990s the boy followed him to rehearsals, watching the players so closely that the conductor of one of those orchestras gave him his first trumpet. He joined the Aguševi Orchestra, founded by his uncle Kočo Agušev, as third trumpet, and in time became its leader. According to ARC Music, it was the trumpet great Ferus Mustafov who gave him the name Džambo.

The orchestra made its name in the brass competitions of the Balkans. It took first place at the Kumanovo Trumpet Festival every year from 2006 to 2011, after which it was no longer allowed to compete so that others could win. It won at Pehčevo in 2011 and 2012, and in 2011 it took first prize in the world competition at Guča in Serbia.

The wider world followed. In Italy the band joined Nino D'Angelo's concert Memento-Momento, directed by Roberto De Simone at the San Carlo Theatre in Naples. Its first international showcase was WOMEX in 2014, and it went on to play for 35,000 people at the Festival Histórico in Mexico City, to tour three continents and to appear at WOMADelaide in Australia in 2026.

Brass Like It Hot, the orchestra's first international album, came out on ARC Music on 30 September 2016 with fourteen tracks, all by Džambo except "Boom", a brass version of a song by Dubioza Kolektiv. Brasses for the Masses followed on Asphalt Tango Records in March 2020, with "Macedonian Nightcrawler", "Old Bazaar Groove", "Taksim Dream" and "Feko Dvojka", and remixes by Dubioza Kolektiv with DJ Branski, Jstar and Kottarashky. Singles such as "Čoček Gazda Unikat" (2021) and "Cifteteli Unikat" (2026) came after. Asphalt Tango calls Džambo the "Funky Tiger of Macedonia" and the most widely celebrated Macedonian musician since Esma Redžepova.