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Feature story on the band
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Pittsburgh City Paper, Feature story on the band >>
For Tamir Muskat, diversity isn't just a p.c. buzzword it's politically and culturally essential to his creativity. Together with fellow Israeli Ori Kaplan, he's founded Balkan Beat Box, a NYC-based outfit whose fusion of ancient and modern musical strains reflects his upbringing in the Holy Land.
The influences here, Muskat explains over the phone from Israel, are heavily Mediterranean, to Eastern European, to Arabic, to cheesy pop on the radio. Growing up here is a melting pot of cultures, so one can get quite confused.
Fifteen years ago, Muskat and Kaplan moved to the U.S. with that cultural baggage and plunged into the downtown New York scene. Kaplan worked his way through the avant-garde jazz community, forming jazz-rockers Shotnez and joining gypsy-punk band Gogol Bordello. Muskat became a member of indie blues-noir acts Firewater and Big Lazy. We were slowly figuring out what to do with these roots influences while being informed by punk and electronic music, he reflects.
Balkan Beat Box has its origins in the J.U.F. (Jewish Ukrainian Friendship), a side-project described by Gogol Bordello's Eugene Hütz as Gogol afterhours.(J.U.F.s name is a takeoff on electropunk group DAF's Deutsch-Amerikanische Freundschaft.) Two and a half years ago, we decided to work in the studio on some new tracks, recalls Muskat, and a year later when the album came out, it became the main thing in our lives. We almost abandoned everything else.Beat Box's self-titled debut emerged last October on Essay Records in Europe and in the states on JDub the label that launched Matisyahu's career. The album elaborates on the foundation of exoticist trends bubbling in the West since the 60s, from Ravi Shankar’s ragas and the klezmer revival to qawwali master Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.
Over the course of what's essentially a global dance primer, the listener is introduced to a panoply of guests: gravel-voiced rai singer Shushan; two female singers who call themselves Bulgarian Chicks; and experimental Israeli vocalist Victoria Hanna. The disc also features such Middle Eastern instruments as the zurna (double-reed shawm) and the ney (Arabic flute). Since the album dropped, Beat Box has undertaken whirlwind tours both here and in Europe. But on the group's first domestic jaunt in March, Muskat didn't expect anything, because this is music that has no history to the average American listener.
The warm stateside reception was a pleasant surprise. Because Beat Box fuses hip-hop, techno, and reggae/dub beats with Levantine melodies, even the MTV generation is starting to catch on. It's hard to explain exactly how people get it, says Muskat, but I think that it hits a nerve that wasn’t hit before, with the combination and freshness of styles together. These are elements that people have grown up with in the past 20 years, and then on top, there's Eastern European melodies. You don't need any background to like it.
One might assume any political message Muskat and Kaplan are trying to convey gets lost in the dance rhythms. Not quite, explains Muskat. We're not part of a political movement, but we've created an illusory world, bringing an Iranian rapper in, using Moroccan gnawa musicians and Palestinian artists. Their government[s] have been fighting for many years, and yet they are in the studio smiling and enjoying each other's presence. For us, there is a big political statement in that.
I'm talking to you during the break in a huge war, he continues, and it's extremely important [for us] to come to Israel at this time. If we have a chance to go to Kosovo, we'll go there, or anywhere we can prove the possibility of people getting along and stopping the conflict. Some might call it a romantic idea.
It's fine to dazzle the West with multi-culti displays, but what inroads can an Israeli-germinated group like Balkan Beat Box make into the Islamic world? We're doing better work than diplomatic ambassadors, claims Muskat. Europe is 25 percent Muslim in some places. We see them at our shows, even Palestinians [t]hey see we're in support of people in the Middle East, not supporting what Israel is doing as far as killing and the army. After a Balkan Beat Box show, a 16-year-old Arab kid in France just might change his views.
A recent meeting in Sweden was most hopeful of all, according to Muskat. We had a four-hour conversation backstage with an Iranian Hezbollah activist. He was so happy that there are Israelis that don't think in a conditioned way. It might be a slow process, but the music does tremendous work, and we feel it daily, everywhere we go. 08/31/06 >> go there
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