It is time for a new summer hit by the musicians from the Akaga Band. After "Let it be summer" and "Time for Sea" they opened the season with “Maimuni” or “Monkeys”. "The song describes the entire process of creating a summer hit," said in an interview for Radio Bulgaria Krassimir Kourtev of the Akaga Band. He is the author of music and part of the lyrics. A curious fact is that the band, which predominantly relies on styles like fusion, jazz, funk and reggae, has collaborated with hip-hop artist Itso Hazarta.

"When summer comes everyone in the music industry starts thinking about making summer hits. In the song we explain what the necessary ingredients for making a summer hit are. Our friend Itso Hazarta describes the overall situation in Bulgaria. We talked about doing something together long time ago and it was very interesting working as a team. It is natural to have different opinions about our song and criticism. I am happy with this type of discussions. Not only part of the audience, but also some musicians are quite conservative. They tell us that we should not use hip hop because it wasn’t good music. I answer them that the power of hip hop lies in the words. Only through hip hop one can explain in a humorous way what is happening in a whole country in just 16 bars of music.  We also made stickers reading “Let’s turn into …” and a monkey is depicted. The idea is to make people smile.”

During the summer months, "Akaga" and Itso Hazarta will have a number of concerts and on the 5th of September they will have a concert in Sozopol during the Apollonia Festival of Arts.

"We are to have a triple concert. Together with us are the young musicians of Funky Miracle,” Krassi Kourtev says. “We support them - they rehearse in our studio. We are not their producers and do not tell them what to do. They play whatever they like, just like us when we were their age."

23 years ago classmates from the Music School in Sofia got together to put through their dream to play like their favourite bands "Chicago" and "Earth, Wind & Fire." The first concerts attracted a large audience which surprised and motivated them.

"People liked our music. We were not world-class musicians but the sincerity of our performance and the fact that we tried to show our own style made us stand out,” Krassimir Kourtev further explains. “Akaga is the name of an ancient Bulgarian pagan priestess. This way the name does not need to be translated and it is linked to Bulgarian history. When we started there were a lot of young bands that were our competition and this gave our work charm and dynamism. We just went out to play and let the audience choose. Unfortunately, the world is changing and stars are becoming more dependent on producers. Young people in Bulgaria watch global TV channels. They do not care how much money is spent for a show, but look for quality. That is why musicians need to offer something modern that can be broadcast on public media. We are negotiating for creating "Akaga Academy" in which young musicians would not sing covers but will write their own songs. We want to have musicians working in various genres, even DJs. Competition will take place on the club stage because this is how real music is born.”

English: Alexander Markov