GOGOL BORDELLO

BORDER CROSSINGS

Gypsy-punks Gogol Bordello continue redefine musical boundaries

by Matt Ashare |  
Published July 31, 2013

One needn't trek very far into the tangled multi-ethnomusicological thickets of "Pura Vida Conspiracy" to grasp several essential qualities about Gogol Bordello, the Gypsy-spirited, rebel-rockin’, trans-national hipster band fronted by the cerebral yet irrepressible, Ukrainian-born singer/social activist/party animal Eugene Hütz. For starters, if Bill Maher gets his kicks out of creating "new rules," then Hütz is clearly a guy who prefers to adhere to none whatsoever, particularly when it comes to musical genres. Take "We Rise Again," the opening track of "Pura Vida Conspiracy," which stands as the band's sixth proper studio album since they emerged from the NYC underground in 1999. As it begins, Hütz, buoyed only by vigorous bluesy acoustic guitar strumming, bears down on what sounds like a tribal chant he may have stumbled across in the Amazonian rain forests of Brazil. A lone violin then introduces a vaguely Eastern European melodic figure; hard-rock power chords enter the fray along with a muscular backbeat; and the band are off and running at a comfortable pace until a defiant chorus leads into what might best be described as a little south-of-the-border thrashcore, replete with Spanish lyrics. Oh, and there's also a rather lovely violin solo, accented by Afro-Cuban-style percussion.
    So, yeah, Hütz and his cohort take great delight in creating a kind of controlled chaos out of mashed-up bits and pieces borrowed from a broad range of cultural traditions. It doesn't hurt that, along with Hütz's Ukrainian background — he took a somewhat circuitous journey to the US, through Poland, Austria, Hungary, and Italy, in the wake of the Chernobyl nuclear power disaster in 1986 — the band's pedigree includes two Russians (violinist Sergey Ryabtsev and accordionist Yuri Lemeshev), a Chinese percussionist/dancer raised in Scotland (Elizabeth Sun), an Ethiopian bassist (Thomas Gobena), and a percussionist from Ecuador (Pedro Erazo). But to suggest that such diversity of membership lends legitimacy to Gogol Bordello's pancultural plundering would be a little disingenuous in light of another central tenet that's been implicit in the band's mission since their start, and that Hütz quickly makes explicit in one of the more salient observations in "We Rise Again" — "Borders are scars on the face of the planet."
    Admittedly, the lines we draw between countries tend to be kinda arbitrary, sometimes cruelly so. Just think of the pain and suffering, not to mention political gridlock, that the boundary separating Mexico and the US continues to cause. Then again, haven't certain borders helped preserve the very same musical traditions that Gogol Bordello rely upon for the cultural clash of a tune like "We Rise Again"? I'll leave it to the political scientists and musicologists to sort that one out. But it should be said that, for all of his globe trotting, Hütz — and this is the third thing that'll strike you just seconds into the start of "Pura Vida Conspiracy" — remains very much identified with his own heritage as a Ukrainian exile with Roma (i.e., Gypsy) ancestry. Indeed, rather than downplaying his guttural accent, he unabashedly plays it up as he lays down his position at the start of the album: "In truth we never gave up on a philosopher's stone/I guess anything you wanna do you gotta do it on your own/For the love of you, for the love of me/For the love of everyone who's yet to be free."
    Hütz goes on to ponder his past on a return visit to the Ukraine in the reflective acoustic rocker "Gypsy Auto Pilot," a revved-up folk song about the old country that brings to mind the Shane MacGowan-led Pogues at the height of their Irish-punk powers in the ’80s, in part because accordion and fiddle more than hold their own, standing toe-to-toe with ringing guitars. And the Gogol Bordello story, which began with the band playing straight Gypsy folk tunes at Russian weddings, before they were embraced by Manhattan's downtown rock scene and grew into respected purveyors of what was widely hailed as "Gypsy punk," parallels that of Los Lobos, the East LA Chicano band whose traditional stylings gave way to more rockist leanings when they crossed over to the post-punk underground int he early-’80s.
    That's some pretty good company to be keeping. But more than anything, Hütz, with his progressive leanings, his border-smashing musical philosophy, and his somewhat exaggerated accent, has emerged as a genuine disciple of the late Joe Strummer, the politically-charged punk prophet who moved on from helming the Clash to imagining a global musical revolution in his latter years. One imagines that Strummer, who once toured as MacGowan's replacement in the Pogues, would be very much at home in the expansive, idealistic sonic world Gogol Bordello have created — a world in which wistful Celtic balladry gives way to Tex-Mex flavored Spanish guitar, and an Russian folk melody sits comfortably atop a brisk ska beat. You could fault Gogol Bordello for overreaching, for championing eclecticism at the expense of coherence. And, it wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing if Hütz and company were more willing to settle into the relatively straightforward trajectory that a track like "Gypsy Auto Pilot" has. But, too much of that would threaten to tame the restless spirit that inspires an album like "Pura Vida Conspiracy." Of course, a big part of what makes Gogol Bordello so compelling is that there simply aren't a whole lot of albums that are "like" this one.