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Concert Preview
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SF Weekly, Concert Preview >>
Not that kind of Brass band: We can get so accustomed to moving to familiar beats, it’s easy to forget that there are other parts of the world that are more than happy to get us dancing. Local outfit Brass Menažeri has been bringing music from the Balkans to the Bay Area since 2000, long before bands like Beirut and Balkan Beat Box were giving Americans a taste of sounds from Serbia and Macedonia. “As both a listener and a player, I’m drawn to Balkan brass music by the combination of the compelling, often odd-metered rhythmic patterns set up by the drums, sousaphone, and baritones with the fiery, Middle Eastern-rooted melodies in close frenetic harmony,” bandleader Peter Jaques says. “Plus, the fact that this is inexorably dance music means that the whole room is involved in creating the music, sending sweaty, ecstatic energy back and forth to the stage.”
These days Brass Menažeri is supporting the reissue of its second album, Vranjski San, which originally came out in 2008 and is now getting a push from the Bay Area-centric Porto Franco Records. For a band that prides itself on delivering high-energy shows, bottling its magic in the studio doesn’t happen by accident. “We recorded almost everything except vocals live in the same room together,” Jaques says. “It’s absolutely critical that we be able to breathe as a band together, feel the rhythms hover in the air between us.”
The next chance to catch Brass Menažeri in its element is onWednesday, Sept. 22, at the Rickshaw Stop with Rupa and the April Fishes and another Jaques product, MWE. 09/20/10 >> go there
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