Gypsy punk power
HIGH NOTES
| So much so that I've often found myself unknowingly bobbing my head to its frenzied pace right in the public eye. It's not any old punk tune but a crazy, irresistible blend of punk rock, Eastern European Roma (gypsy) music, dub and heavy metal (to name a few) and a narrative of radical socio-political messages sung in a Slavic accent that would show Borat for the farce he is. This is the music of Gogol Bordello. |
| If, for whatever reason, you have ever been in search of a band that typifies globalisation and melting-pot culture, here's an ace candidate for you. |
| Fronted by the cultural icon Eugene Hütz, who is from Ukraine, Gogol Bordello also consists of seven other members including Russians Sergey Rjabtzev(violin) and Yuri Lemeshev (accordion), Tommy Gobena (bass) from Ethiopia, Eliot Ferguson (drums) from the US, Oren Kaplan (guitar) from Israel, Thai-America Pam Racine (percussion, dance) and Elizabeth Sun (percussion, dance) who is Chinese Scottish. |
| Impressive as this line up may be, it's more often than not the striking history and personality of Hütz, the band's creator, singer and chief songwriter, that tends to demand the most attention. The disaster at Chernobyl in 1986 forced him and his family "" like thousands of others "" to evacuate his hometown of Kiev in the Ukraine. |
| After spending seven years travelling around Europe, a relocation programme brought them to the US where they finally settled in Vermont. By then, the roots of Hütz's musical aspirations had already been planted. Due to Soviet control, there was little access to Western music on the radio. |
| Thankfully, distorted AM radio allowed them access to the music of the West. It was here that Hütz would first hear the likes of the Sex Pistols, The Dead Kennedys, Jimi Hendrix, The Clash and many others. But the musical turning point in his life, by his own admission, was when he attended a Sonic Youth concert in Kiev in 1988. |
| According to him, Sonic Youth were then in their prime and their performance was so powerful that he could barely stand it. Once in the US, Hütz made his way to New York where he finally put together Gogol Bordello in 1998. |
| Over the last many years the band has created a reputation for their insanely uninhibited and energetic live performances that in many ways re-enact gypsy gatherings, with Hütz at the helm of things. |
| It was initially embraced by the entire section of central Europeans who inhabited the lower east side of New York but word spread soon and Gogol Bordello found themselves a much wider audience and came to be regarded the pioneers of a style of music called Gypsy Punk. |
| Currently signed onto independent punk label Side One Dummy Records, in their short existence, Gogol Bordello have released five albums including the critically acclaimed and breakthrough album Gypsy Punks: Underdog World Strike (2005). |
| To Hütz, who likes to say it exactly as it is, punk music always meant liberation. And therefore issues relating to human rights, cultural identity and global governmental systems that can result in mass chaos are just a few of the themes that run through the songs on their album. |
| The theme of their latest album Super Taranta! is New Rebel Intelligence (NRI), a theory created by the band and based on their philosophy that music and art can inspire people to affect positive change. |
| In 2006, filmmaker Pavla Fleischer made a documentary called The Pied Piper of Hutzovina, which followed Eugene Hütz across countries including Ukraine, Hungary and Siberia where he went in search of his gypsy roots to understand the music that he is now famously representing in his own way across the globe. |