NY-based gypsy jugband GOGOL BORDELLO delivers an uneasy mix of JETHRO TULL telluric ambition and MANO NEGRA eclecticism bursting through borders. The rather singular approach meant gypsy music was once again present under the Pop radar but differing from THE GYPSY KINGS this music rings unconventional in the conventional ear. Today they are a novelty act, as exotism becomes once again hype.
Nowadays people, embedded in Marcel Duchamp's "sovereignty of the artist" (a prerequisite for working out the fusions of high and popular, Western and the rest, aesthetics) converge to a bounded claim on the world. The "world" exhausts the possibilities for genuine invention - everything had been done before, somewhere in the world, somewhere in time. Nowadays' ontology is one of recombination, of processes of hybridization between what is socially, culturally available elsewhere. That exotics and eclecticism was reflected in the 1960s Psychedelia and infuses post-modern melting pots such as GOGOL BORDELLO, the mother of all cultural eclectics, MANO NEGRA and their common ancestor, THE CLASH.
Acquiescing before differences and cultural plurality (enhanced with spiritual or quasi-spiritual qualities) was a pivotal move that asserted that everything had been done before and was available for (careful, context-sensitive) social recombination, and no boundaries for social recombination. The kind of grand narrative of grand narratives, of great modernizing synthesis by "sovereign" (maybe Enlightened) artists is reinforced by the late 20th trend of turning identity into commodity.
Identity-as-commodity on the one side polishes the edges of discrimination, allowing for tolerance or at least accommodation, if not for Universalist aspirations. On the other side, commoditization diminishes the depth of individuation calling for real-deal equality. It becomes literally unfashionable. In a supposedly post-modern world a cornucopia of different claims - genre claims, race claims, national claims, regional claims, cosmopolitan claims etc - constitute an overloaded landscape of belonging and recognition. In such a world, according to authors such as Arjun Appadurai, old identities not only get unsettled by newfound difference, but also are actively appropriated and creolized, hybridized, fused and overlapped with novelties.
Differing from the kind of "Enlightened" people endowed with the requirements from transcending boundaries (such as the sons of diplomats, like THE CLASH's Joe Strummer and rambling immigrant artists such as MANU CHAO), GOGOL BORDELLO presents themselves as an alternative - they are the gypsies. Interestingly, despite the fact they may be nomads, GOGOL BORDELLO incorporates the mantle-bearing of representation. Their identity is fixed within the transboundary eagerness for recombination. Indie identities find their safe ground in of such an operation. Somebody's past becomes a platform for someone else's "entrance" in Modernity but the vehemence of the "appropriation" and the resulting fusions and re-combination constitute a challenge in themselves to the former's historic account of itself. Actively employing social resources available for identity building - in a situation of inferiority, of colonization and dependence - human beings and communities refurbish history inside-out. GOGOL BORDELLO is another story for another place but they do so reifying stories and places.
With integrants rambling between Poland, Hungary, Austria and Italy, one wonders if GOGOL BORDELLO's sonority reflects such musical cornucopia. Their debut EP - When The Trickster Starts-A-Pokin - is an urgent, disparate concoction of sonorities, at the speed of light. It sounds exotic and singular on the surface but the principle of its aesthetics' legitimacy is the same employed by THE BEATLES and Brazilian Tropicalists in the late 1960s - sovereign eclecticism, strengthened by their supposedly "rootsy" approach.
When The Trickster Starts-A-Pokin erupts with frantic accordions, well-tempered violas, Punkish attitude and Eastern Europe accents. It's a massive wall of sounds, but seemingly interlocked with a cartoonish sense of dynamics and Cabaret drama. Then one realizes it's not that Punk - it sounds eclectic for the sake of itself. Or it may be just a matter of a jug bar band - celebrating recklessness for the thrill of it all. An eerie industrial guitar riff will confuse listeners that may know the vocalist came from Ukraine - until they realize Germany goes West. In doing so they sound like cultural ironists (Richard Rorty) - their message may not be universal, there may be not much sense to it, but they find it worthwhile anyway. In doing so they also reinforce some stereotypes (gypsy music as let's-go-party music, nomadism as emotionalism and unpredictability - that's the songs' surname, "Bordello kind of guy"), which arrive comfortably in the wide opened arms of their Indie audience.
Occurrence on the Border (Hopping on a Pogo-Gypsy Stick) is their sendup to THE GYPSY KINGS - and the greatest statement of the debut. Crossing references (Pogo and Gypsy Stick, acoustic guitars and drunken choruses etc) they sound relentlessly refreshing. The slightly psychedelic wooden instruments and rootsy percussion confers an atmosphere of an authentic artifact - where the raw material of gypsy music was effectively channeled through the Punk funnel. In doing so they demonstrate the potential for late-Modern recombination trespassing boundaries in practice. See ya there.
File under: Eclectic modernity
Tracklist:
* * * * When The Trickster Starts-A-Pokin (Bordello kind of guy)
* * * * 1/2 Occurrence on the Border (Hopping on a Pogo-Gypsy Stick)
Recommended:
Yes
Great Music to Play While: At Work
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![When the Trickster Starts a-Pokin' [EP] [Digipak] by Gogol Bordello](http://di1.shopping.com/images1/pi/b3/8f/5b/2002230130-177x150-0-0.jpg)
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