all photos: Dave Stroup

In all honesty, I went to this show as a Gogol Bordello fan expecting a rag-tag bunch of Eastern Bloc Rock blended not-so-subtly with that heinous catch-all, “world music”. There have been times when listening to Balkan Beat Box that I’ve thought “oh, perhaps Eugene Hütz got a hold of the latest Putumayo CD at Barnes and Noble and remixed it for shits and giggles”.

Let me be frank: I was so fucking wrong. These fellas won me over. Their recordings don’t do them justice. The recordings aren’t close to the energy and the palpable physical tension in the room, and it’s really the crowd’s fault. These kids came to dance and writhe and no one was going to stop them (even the guy who was seen walking away with blood on his face after a particularly brutal crowd jumping session. way to take it like a champ!).

Opening band Forro in the Dark started their set to a 9:30 Club filled with a couple dozen people wandering aimlessly and at least 10 rabid fans. I had no idea this band garnered so much squealing from a particular pack of girls in long skirts – must have been their set at the Kennedy Center a few years back. The best description I heard for their music over the course of this evening was, “It’s as if a Brazilian soccer team had sex with O.A.R. and this is the by-product”. If there’s such a thing as a brasileño jam band complete with a kickass reed flautist (now there’s something I never thought I’d say), this is it. The music is entertaining and unoffensive; I could see myself cleaning my apartment with this music in the background, a cold bottle of Chardonnay in my hand. Sometimes all you want is good background noise.

By the time Balkan Beat Box arrived (notice how I didn’t say “come on stage”) the 9:30 Club had swelled from a couple dozen to a couple hundred, all salivating for the headliner. I’ve noticed a trend in DC where shows (especially at 9:30, given the bigger acts they catch) are full to the brim of people; 2/3 will be fans of the particular performer, of those maybe 1/4 will be rabid. The remaining 1/3 are bored to tears and only there because they saw it was mentioned by DCist, Express, or our dear BYT. Not so for this show. I was genuinely impressed at the sociological cross-section of crowd offered by Balkan Beat Box, including an old couple in what looked to be their late 70s with their hands all over each other. Yes, it was kind of sickening. Yes, it was kind of cute.

Balkan Beat Box came out not with a whimper, but a bang. In lieu of the de rigueur band-marches-out-from-backstage-oh-look-let’s-clap-now they came out with drums along the top mezzanine, down to the pit. The crowd went nuts, thrashing wildly. This was not the standard “fold your hands child and stare at the ground” show that’s so often bemoaned on the forums of BYT, FUCK NO! And Gogol Bordello, they were not.

The irony here is that while they’re often compared to Gogol Bordello, live on stage they sound very little like the erstwhile Gypsy Punks with their pickle buckets, dueling guitars and violins. Instead, think constant energy you could almost touch with your hands, complemented by a kick ass horn section with a man who bears a strikingly sad resemblance to Michael McDonald (sorry)

Balkan Beat Box takes a lot of influence from jazz and klezmer, no doubt due to Israeli frontman Ori Kaplan’s background as a jazz saxophonist. They are less quirky, ethnic punk and more jazz infused hip hop than anything else I’d seen or heard.

They also have great sustain, playing for almost two full hours. And I mean playing with no actual slow songs to wither around to, no jam band-esque soliloquies on the guitar so the drummer can take a break, none of that. They brought the heat the whole time, and almost magically they kept everyone gyrating at a furious pace for almost the whole show. By the end what had started as a hips-don’t-lie-ass-grinding version of The Wave had slowed to a more mediocre shimmy, but damn it they were still moving. The only member of my party who was still moving and shaking after the encores cut her teeth on Phish shows which never, ever end. There is probably a Phish show going on right now, as we speak. Only the strong can survive Phish and apparently Balkan Beat Box as well.

As you can imagine, the crowd swelled in response to “Bulgarian Chicks”, their most recognizable song of club-hit status. In reality the swell was barely noticeable as the crowd never really let go of the band the whole time. I realize I’m harping on the crowd aspect, but I truly have not seen such a reaction at a DC show, and especially not at Gogol Bordello. Balkan Beat Box is less Gypsy Punk and would be a great definition of world music (how else can dancehall, reggae, klezmer, jazz, hip hop, and punk with blatant political overtones coexist so peacefully?) if our society didn’t have this mental block where we equate amazing world music:

with this asshole?

Broaden your horizons DC, and be sad you missed a great show.