Balkan Beat Box must put on an amazing live show. Recorded, they sound like a block party, namely a Brooklyn block party with different styles of music pouring from windows and stoops.
It’s hard to sit still though the melting pot of beats that flow from this collection of Middle Eastern, eastern European, and North African music. It’s a celebration of old-world traditions in a new-world setting. Led by Ori Kaplan (Gogol Bordello) and Tamir Muskat (Firewater), BBB are doing for eastern-bloc, Balkan, and Arabic folk music what the forefathers of reggaeton did with Caribbean dancehall – mashing old instruments and old structures up with new technology and attitude.
Nu Med, likely short for New Mediterranean, has been used by Kaplan to describe the collective’s musical output and is BBB’s follow-up to their 2006 self-titled release. It’s a 14-track party dominated at different moments by guests with different accents, each with the same fearless glee. Not only will you want to get up and dance, you’ll want to flamenco, belly dance, and then gather friends in a circle for a horah.
On “Hermetico,” a blend of handclaps, horse whinnying, rooster crows, and Don Omar-style vocals the singer demands, “Here we go, you better listen…pick up your clapping hands and pay attention.” It’s not an empty threat. You can’t ignore these partying neighbors.
– Lori Barrett
Balkan Beat Box (JDub Records)