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GORAN BREGOVIC LIVE AT MASONIC AUDITORIUM
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Muzikifan, GORAN BREGOVIC LIVE AT MASONIC AUDITORIUM >>
Seven pm seemed like an odd hour to start a concert on the first night of Summer, so I assumed there would be a deejay or opening act, but as we went in we could hear applause and saw the 5-piece brass band assembling in the hallway, ready to make their entrance. The 1940s Fascist-style architecture of Masonic Auditorium may not have been an intentional choice for a Serbian brass band but it suited the macho fist-waving crowd & stirring martial music. SF Jazz had abandoned Herbst theatre in favour of the larger capacity venue because of brisk ticket sales. A string quartet kicked things off, then two women in embroidered folkloric outfits & flower-bedecked headgear came on and did some wonderful warbling. Following them, half a dozen older guys in dinner jackets and bow-ties arrived and added the male voice chorale. The brass players lifted it up a notch and then a trap drummer with a manic foot on the bass drum pedal joined in. Last to enter was the star Goran, in a crumpled white suit, looking like a twin of the drummer with his bushy parted-in-the-middle 70s haircut. He sat in the centre with his guitar and mainly conducted the others. Within three numbers the entire audience of 3000 white people were on their feet, in the aisles, pogoing like crazy. Please sit down, said Bregovic, it's going to be a long night. People reluctantly filed back to their seats but pretty soon were up again and then the ushers gave up and retreated as the Balkan hordes took over. There is so little international music in SF that I assume it was sheer nostalgia for their homeland that brought these vast numbers out. Interestingly last time Boban Markovic played there were only about 300 people at Ashkenaz, and this equivalent band had ten times as many people paying at least twice as much. Someone clearly has a better agent. If you have heard the two discs I reviewed below you will know why this is an exciting live band. As they are called the Weddings & Funerals Band they alternated between raucous oompah ditties and more melancholy vocal pieces, and periodically went into aural landscapes that were from the film scores Bregovic has written. The drummer handled most of the lead vocals. The music was complex and moved from suite to suite like clockwork. The baritone tuba player doubled on accordion and the excellent sax player also doubled on clarinet, so there was a great array of sounds on tap. The audience got to sing along on "Alkohol" and "Gas gas" which reminded me of that old smoky-voiced Italian singer the Duchess likes, Paolo Conte. She thought it was fancy oompah music, with the added string quartet and chorus. But the orchestral pieces were very enjoyable and a chance for the sweating crowd to just wave their arms like sea anemones. I also thought of Nino Rota, not any piece specifically, just the way he would take bits of folk music and ornament them, and Bari is just a ferry ride across the Adriatic from Split. During the wild numbers (including the Lee Dorsey cover "Ya Ya" which reminded me of the parallel between New Orleans funeral brass bands and this one), the male chorus sat looking amusedly at the audience. I wonder what they think of this, said the Duchess. It beats sitting at home wondering if the tractor coming down the street is going to go around the rain-filled pothole or go straight through it, I replied. 06/22/09 >> go there
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