>>PREVIEW
GOGOL BORDELLO
Wednesday, February 8
Liberty Lounge
"Help is on the way, man!" Eugene Hutz reassures me in his charming Eastern European accent. Hutz is a DJ, a charismatic actor (Everything Is Illuminated), and an eccentric New York character if ever there was one. But most importantly, he is the wild front man of Gypsy-punk band Gogol Bordello.
Gogol Bordello is one of the more confounding bands around right now. Not just for the miscellany of cultures that they represent, and not for a lack of earnestness on their part. Their sound is an honest blend of authentic Gypsy folk music, only with an edgy Americanized inflection – not the most obvious combination of styles. Opting for mostly acoustic instruments, most of the punk rock comes from their attitude and performance.
The confounding part is that it works. And it’s turning a new generation on to a style of music that has never been in fashion before. Hutz is actually quite assertive when describing his band as a sagacious faction in contemporary music.
"We make tons of influence on subculture already. In a lot of ways we make Gypsy music to be part of a young generation’s listening collection, which is right where it belongs – that is not something that anyone was able to do before us. I go to California and there are kids at our shows – 21 or 22-year-old skate punks who were brought up on Operation Ivy and Rancid, now they listen to Eastern European Gypsy music, through us."
So what influences a guy to even think of starting a band like this? If you look at Hutz’s dramatic personal history, you can actually trace the sources of his unique musical sensibilities. In the mid- ’80s, in the wake of Chernobyl, he and his family fled Kiev, only to spend his late teens travelling across Europe through refugee camps (where he acquired his taste for authentic Gypsy folk music). In his early 20s, Hutz emigrated to New York City, where he currently resides.
Since living in the U.S., Hutz has enjoyed a DJ residency at a Bulgarian bar where he exercises his eclectic repertoire of music, living out a long-standing admiration for American rock ’n’ roll as well as his wealth of knowledge of various styles of European traditional music. Those influences sit at the core of Gogol Bordello.
"It’s just a very extreme band," Hutz continues. "The music doesn’t come out of a clean sterilized environment, it’s a total clash, and this clash is pretty intense….
"Over a period of six years, there was couple of members who came and left, because Gogol Bordello is not for the weak-hearted. If you don’t have particular kind of psychological stamina, and physical stamina, you won’t be able to handle it. There were some members in the very beginning who simply couldn’t take it where I was taking it, ’cause I was making the band more and more extreme, and they were just like, ‘What the fuck? I can’t be onstage with you anymore, because I’m scared for my life.’"
Although the band’s sound is more ingrained in its ethnic roots than its punk roots, their fan base is primarily young and punk, with more traditional folks perhaps shying away from the live shows. But that’s OK with Hutz.
"I’m more concerned about where the young generation is going because they’re the future," he explains. "But I also know a lot of old Gypsies back in the Ukraine who say that it is completely unorthodox, but it helps our culture to come to the surface.
"We take it where we wanna take it every time. It all comes out of being faithful to our authentic traditions, but at the same time fucking with them." |
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