Ferus Mustafov

Ferus Mustafov, known as King Ferus, was a Macedonian Romani saxophonist and clarinetist and one of the great names of Yugoslav and Macedonian folk music. Called the king of Romani music, he was among the artists credited with making the Romani music of the Balkans popular around the world. He was born on 20 December 1950 in Štip into a family of musicians.

His father, the saxophonist Ilmi Jašarov, is credited with bringing the saxophone into the folk music of the region, and his mother, Zumbrut, also played the saxophone, though not professionally. Ferus's professional career began at seventeen, while he was studying violin and clarinet at the local music school: he was invited to tour with a band led by Toma Črčev, and the tour went so well that he left his studies to become a working musician.

After a year of military service, during which he made his name playing at evening dances, he moved to Sarajevo, where he took a leading part in the boom of folk music there at the time. In the 1980s he swapped tunes over the telephone with the Bulgarian clarinetist Ivo Papazov, since travel from Bulgaria to Yugoslavia was not allowed, and he played pieces built on Papazov's melodies. His father and Bulgarian wedding music were his main influences.

Ferus Mustafov later became director of music programming in the Romani language at Radio Television Skopje. His records include the single "Mitino kolo" (1978) and the albums Ora i čočeci (1984), Ferus Mustafov & His Guests: 1 + 4 (1989) and Najgolemi hitovi (1993). Albums on world music labels won him an international audience: King Ferus, also released as Macedonian Wedding Soul Cooking (1995, Globe Style), The Heat of Balkan Gypsy Soul (2002, Tropical) and Legends of Gypsy Music from Macedonia (2008, Arc). He was among the first Macedonian Romani instrumentalists to appear regularly on Western recordings, and his music is on The Rough Guide to the Music of Eastern Europe (1999).

He performed in many countries and recorded about a dozen albums, mostly instrumental. In 2018 the Macedonian writer Ivan Šopov made him the main character of his story "Aferata Džon Koltrejn" (The John Coltrane Affair). Ferus Mustafov died in the early morning of 22 May 2023 in Skopje, at the age of 72. His son, Ilmi Mustafov, is also a musician.