Love and music help couple beat the odds

How far would you go for love? As far as Faith Ristic?

We’re not talking about mileage – even though her romance has taken her from Oxford to virtual exile in Serbia – but her determination to overcome a host of difficulties to marry the man she loves.

“Sometimes I still sit here in despair but when I look back on how much we have achieved I realise how much we have overcome together,” says Faith, who married husband Branko in 2012.

“The very fact we have stuck together through so many obstacles has created a glue between us that I believe will be hard to break.”

It’s a love story that has music at its heart.

In 2009 Faith went to study accordion in Serbia. “Since then it has been a roundabout of falling in love with a gypsy, extreme poverty, music making, mental illness, life in a little gypsy village in Serbia, massive cultural differences – and a crazy determination to get where I am now – a music and TV star in the Serbian Gypsy diaspora, married to top gypsy violinist Branko Ristic,” she says.

As a student, Faith had enrolled at Kings College in London to study classical music but before her courses began she went to South America for seven months and realised that there was “a whole wealth of music outside of this one classical tradition”.

“So I went to the School of Oriental and African Studies instead and learnt Indian Tablas, studied piano in Cuba, Korean Percussion... until I took up the accordion and began to enter into the world of Balkan Music in London,” says Faith.

“This music was exciting to me – and the world of the gypsies fascinated me.”

Short of money, Faith went to work as an industrial carpenter in the Sharpness Docks, until she heard Cotswolds-based Giffords Circus was looking for a musical director who played accordion and understood Balkan music.

“This was a dream come true for me – I had hero worshipped the musicians in Giffords Circus every year and never imagined that I could be one of them,” says Faith, who then joined the 2008 tour.

When the show was over, Faith received a grant from the Winston Churchill Trust to study accordion abroad and she headed for the town of Valjevo in Serbia where the Serbian-Gypsy band Kal who ran Romany music and language courses. She ended up staying four months and during that time she first met Branko, a poverty-stricken gypsy, with Type 1 diabetes.

“The circus had asked me to look for some Roma musicians whilst I was there, and having asked the man who ran the course his advice was taken to Branko’s house. I remember turning up – he sat outside his house in a white vest, thin, shy and trying to understand what my friend was asking. I couldn’t speak any Serbian or Romany so I only understood the bits that were translated to me.”

Faith spent many happy evenings playing music with Branko and his friends. “I was blissfully happy playing music with him, and felt incredible love towards him – but never considered this to be romantic in any way,” she says.

“I went back to my life easily and honestly thought very little of Serbia. I toured again with Giffords Circus as a Bandleader in a 1940s show; I had a fling with a French tight-rope artist and later chased him to Paris; I cycled 2000km across China; worked in a touring children’s theatre show, taught piano in Oxford and toured with the edgy brass band Orkestra Del Sol in Australia. But I was still not particularly happy.”

Arriving back in the UK in 2011 she began to think of Serbia again. “In the end my mum advised me to go back. I had a strong feeling that I had begun something that was not complete – like a book half read,” she says.

In July 2011 Faith went back again and within two weeks the “brother and sister” love Faith and Branko had for each other had turned to the romantic kind.

“Branko later (when we could actually communicate!) told me that a few months before this his relationship had finished and that his life has reached rock bottom.

“When he was near death in hospital he had had a vision that a ‘white’ girl would arrive in his life who played music – and she would either raise him up or destroy him.

“Whether I believe in God, or energy, or something that shapes our path in life – it was at this time that I unexpectedly felt pulled to return to Serbia again.”

The couple became inseparable: there were still problems but one thing Faith never doubted were Branko’s feelings for her.

“I was assured in his honesty and complete goodness, I knew from long experience the dynamics of foreign men and girls with British passports but Branko would refuse to take my money and at the hilarity of others in his village would save up his money from weddings to pay for the English girl’s food and taxis.”

The couple tried twice to get him a tourist visa for the UK but were refused.

“The home office require evidence of a recorded regular income and Branko had never been into a bank, let alone knew what a pay slip was,” said Faith. “The economy in Serbia is very bad – the average wage (if you can find work) is about 200 euros a month, and rent on a house is 110 euros.”

The couple spent the winter of 2011 living in -30C weather in a small rented house, practising and composing music “and adopting freezing cats”.

They decided to get married in March 2012, but a week before the marriage Branko went to get a tooth pulled and ended up in a severe condition in hospital on blood transfusions. He recovered enough to be discharged on the day of the ceremony and stagger to the wedding; and the next year began to get easier.

“I was awarded a UK Arts Council Grant to compose and record music in Serbia and the Serbian media began to pick up on our story,” says Faith.

“By December 2012 we had been on (Serbian) Big Brother, Marriage Judge and had several documentaries made about us.”

Last year the couple came to the UK to take part in Giffords Circus’s Serbian Gypsy themed show; over the winter they toured Australia with the gypsy band Lolo Lovina and returned to Serbia in March.

“We have come a long way in three years and whilst it sometimes all seems hopeless I believe that in another three years we will have gone even further,” says Faith.

Because of UK immigration laws – £18,600 is the minimum income leveI and, says Faith: “I believe the Life in the UK Test to be beyond Branko’s capabilities as an uneducated but immensely talented musician” the couple are currently living in Vienna.

They have completed a Crowdfundraising campaign to raise money to record a CD – Faith I Branko – which charts their struggle of love and their dream is to play and tour their music, and “to have a foundation to aid diabetes and mental and physical health issues in Serbia for which there is little or no help at the present”.

It’s been a long, hard journey but does Faith have any regrets? “Branko and Serbia have stolen my heart,” she says.

“In Oxford I may have what most would call a ‘richer’ standard of living – but in Serbia I have found richness in the truest sense among its people and musical wealth.”

Some of Faith and Branko’s demo recordings and videos can be heard at faithibranko.com, along with a short trailer for a documentary about their lives made by the filmmaker Catherine Harte.