The Dreadnoughts celebrate their 20th anniversary with another Punkstravagranza weekend! THE DREADNOUGHTS, BALKAN SHMALKAN, DIRTY ARTICHOKES +19 (with 2 pieces of govt issued ID) Party music from Turin. Balkan Shmalkan is East Vancouver’s sweet dance party orchestra; think global music with local attitude. Their funky brass dance beats are rooted in the aural traditions of the Roma and Klezmorim of Eastern Europe and blended with a mixture of pop and jazz. Members of the group sing in 5 languages including Serbian, Romani, and Italian. The group contains six to twelve musicians playing reed, brass and percussion instruments of both eastern and western origin. Balkan Shmalkan is the brain child of a group of musicians with a long history of collaboration in traditional South Serbian Trubaci music. This project is a way of blending that music with other vibrant traditions and bringing it to the general population of Greater Vancouver. Balkan Shmalkan is exceptionally versatile and mobile, playing on and off stage with nothing more than the power of their lungs and a few horns. The Dreadnoughts began to play folk-punk in 2007 with a single goal: to make enough money at shows to cover the cost of shots of Fireball Whiskey at Vancouver’s notoriously seedy Ivanhoe Hotel. Ten years on and counting, they can boast of four studio albums, two EPs, and hundreds of unforgettable live shows spanning the globe. They’ve blended punk rock and a bunch of European folk traditions with a power and range that few other groups can match. And it’s been a blast.