Washington Post, Review >>
The goal of Les Yeux Noirs is to demonstrate different cultures' musicalaffinities, but the octet's "Balamouk" is even more complicatedlinguistically than musically. The band is based in France, so it has aFrench name, which means "black eyes." That name is derived, however, from aRussian Gypsy tune popularized in the '30s by Belgian-born "hot jazz"guitarist Django Reinhardt. The album title, meanwhile, is Romanian for"house of the insane," and the songs' lyrics are in Russian, Yiddish andRoma, the Gypsy language.
One way of combining these influences would be to fuse them into a trendyworld-beat style. The Yeux do use electric guitar and discreet dub beats,giving a gentle trip-hop twist to such Old World-sounding tunes as "YiddisheMame" (actually written for a '20s Broadway musical); the lively "Tchaye"drops Spanish guitar and percussion into the stew, recalling Mano Negra'spolyglot folk-punk. Most often, though, the violins of sibling band leadersErik and Olivier Slabiak dance between klezmer and Roma music, similarstyles that each balance melancholy and exuberance. "Balamouk" sounds fresh,but Les Yeux Noirs is clearly more interested in reclaiming the old than inflaunting the new.
Mark Jenkins 09/06/02 >> go there
|
