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CD Review
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Music Library Association, CD Review >>
Balkan Beat Box
Nu Med
Try not to be put off by the incomprehensible header to this review. To make things a bit clearer: this is the second album by an aggressively multicultural, pan-Middle-Eastern worldbeat group called Balkan Beat Box; the album's title is Nu*Med (an abbreviation of "new Mediterranean") and it is released on JDub Records, a label devoted to Jewish music in a wide variety of styles, from all over the diaspora. (The label's most successful release to date featured Matisyahu, a famously devout Lubavitcher Hassid and highly accomplished reggae singer and beatboxer.) Balkan Beat Box's music draws on everything from American hip hop, reggae, and funk to traditional East European folk music, Arabic pop, and Gypsy melodies. What unites all of these disparate elements is a primary concern with groove; whether the melodic material comes from a Moroccan café or from a Bulgarian choral composition, it is always supported by beats that would sound at home in a dance club. (Maybe not an American dance club, but a dance club somewhere.) Highlight tracks include a reggaeton-meets-klezmer workout called "Digital Monkey," the slinky "Habibi min Zaman," and an instrumental titled "Quand Est-ce Qu'on Arrive?" that sounds like a mixture of ska, polka, surf pop, and Gypsy wedding music. This album offers encouraging evidence that music can be blended from a wide variety of traditions without melting into something homogenized and boring.
07/26/07
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