Brenna MacCrimmon has been learning and performing the music of Turkey and the Balkans since 1984. She has worked with Turkish and Macedonian groups in Toronto over the years and has made frequent trips to Turkey and environs to absorb the music and culture. The longest such trip lasted from 1995 to 2000. Brenna has taught Turkish and Macedonian singing at both Mendocino and Iroquois Springs Balkan Music & Dance workshop sponsored by the EEFC as well as numerous workshops for theater groups and interested parties in various places around North America, Europe and even Japan. Her recordings include Karsilama (with Turkish Rom clarinetist Selim Sesler), Ajde Mori (with Muammer Ketencoglu and friends) and Kulak Misafiri. As a guest musician she has recorded and performed with Baba Zula and djShantel, and was featured in Crossing the Bridge, Fatih Akın's 2005 documentary about the Istanbul music scene. She enjoys strumming mac tam and "türkülele" and loves singing with Edessa.

Daniela Ivanova Daniela Ivanova is a Bulgarian folklorist who is also a researcher of South Slavic cultures. Her singing repertoire was collected throughout her extensive field work in the Balkans; it includes hundreds of songs from Bulgaria and Macedonia, and many from Serbia, Bosnia and more.

Dragi Spasovski, was born in the small village of Studena Bara, near Kumanovo, only 25 km from Skopje. His family moved to Skopje when he was 4, where he made his first steps in exploring life, art, music and dancing. He was "the" actor in elementary school drama, then joined the school ballet group, and finally, influenced by his mother's singing, mostly in their home, he found himself swept away by the folk spirit. Most of the songs Dragi has recorded he learned from his mother, "songs which were inside of me since I was a child, songs which I shared with myself and others when I was happy and when I was sad. The song was, is, and will be a description of me, a picture of my soul."