From Darkness, Musical Light
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The San Francisco Examiner, From Darkness, Musical Light >>
BY ANDREW GILBERT
Special to The Examiner
When Jews and Gypsies make the headlines in Europe, the news is invariably bad.
The two diasporic peoples share a calamitous centuries-long experience of persecution and Nazi-perpetrated genocide, and while the recent upsurge of anti-Semitic violence in France and Russia has gained considerable attention, the situation for Gypsies, or Roma as they refer to themselves, has been quietly dire since the fall of Eastern Europe's communist regimes.
Given these persistent shadows, one might expect a band combining the music of the Roma and Eastern European Jewry to dwell on the darkness that continues to hang over the continent. But the electrifying French band Les Yeux Noirs (The Dark Eyes) is all about celebrating life rather than death.
With their torrential blend of klezmer and Gypsy styles, Les Yeux interpret traditional songs with decidedly contemporary arrangements that retain the music's giddy energy and dance-inducing rhythms.
"We don't have a message about the tragic history of the Jewish and Gypsy people," says violinist Erik Slabiak, who along with his brother Olivier founded the band about 12 years ago. "To play this music in the 21st century is itself the message. This music survives like the people. The character of these people is very intense and dramatic, and one reason the Gypsy and Jewish people exist today is that they never give in to sadness."
Les Yeux Noir made their Bay Area debut last year at Stern Grove, where they turned the grassy field into a gyrating celebration. The band returns to the West Coast this week for a series of gigs, including the World Music Festival in Fairfax on Saturday and Sunday afternoon, Ashkenaz in Berkeley on Sunday evening, and the Elbo Room in The City on Monday.
Born into a highly musical Jewish family with Polish roots, the Slabiak brothers started studying violin as children and both received a rigorous conservatory education. While their parents hoped they would pursue careers in classical music, they were drawn to the pop music of the day. But as violinists, joining a rock band didn't seem like an option, so they began exploring the Yiddish tunes they learned from their grandparents.
"We came up in a family where music and traditions were very important, where we learned the tenderness of the music and the humor of the culture," Erik says. "When we became teenagers our ears were opened by pop and rock music. It was the time of Supertramp, David Bowie and Tom Waits. It was very natural for us to make a combination between our culture and all the music we love. We find the same energy in Gypsy and Yiddish music as in pop, rock and jazz."
Indeed, while the band started as an acoustic sextet, featuring two violins, accordion, guitar, cello and stand-up bass, the group has evolved in recent years into a hybrid eight-piece ensemble. With Sicilian electric bassist Franck Anastasio, Caribbean-born drummer Aidje Tafial, cellist Francois Perchat and electric guitarist Pascal Rondeau, both born in France, and two Romanian Gypsies, Constantin Bitica on accordion and Marian Miu on cimbalom (a large hammer dulcimer), Les Yeux have honed a high energy sound driven as much by the dynamic percussion section as by the keening strings.
"We wanted to evolve and use electric instruments, and we added two players, a trap drummer to be modern and the cimbalomist to be traditional," Erik says. "But the cimbalomist, who is very famous in Romania, is playing like a rock musician, fast and hard with a very big sound. In some ways he's the perfect symbol of this band, playing this very old, traditional instrument like a rocker."
With four players joining together to sing the Yiddish, Russian and Roma lyrics, the band's latest album, "Balamouk" on World Village, is also an impressive vocal showcase. Love songs, laments, lullabies and Balkan blues -- the tunes speak of the pain and joy of life, and the necessity of perseverance, a message that is no less relevant today for Europe's Jews and Roma. 09/19/02
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