April 14th, 2008
Imagine that you, an American (in this example), have uprooted yourself from your home digs and bopped off to live in some pleasant but remote backwater. It’s so remote that you haven’t heard a song in English since you arrived. One day you happen upon a small restaurant and hear familiar music wafting out onto the sidewalk. You peer inside. A waitress is plopping plates of burgers (burgers!) in front of a few patrons lounging at small tables. And just inside the door, in the corner by the window, there’s a band - also locals. But they’re playing American music! Songs you know but haven’t heard for years! But… they’re playing music you HATED back home. You not only hated it, you hated anyone who liked that music. You’d cross the street to avoid being contaminated by accidental earbud bleed from one of them.
But now… you’re far from home. It’s been years. Can you really remember why you hated those songs so much? Would you roll your eyes and walk on? Or would you waft in, grinning and singing along? And those people you hated - the ones who loved the songs you hate - would you turn away? Or would you sit down and shoot the breeze? Even if it was someone who’s favorite song was Achy Breaky Heart, I bet you’d share a drink and a chorus.
I haven’t talked much here about my other band, Balkanarama. We play hot gypsy nightclub music various places around the Seattle area but mostly (monthly) at a local Greek restaurant and mostly for immigrants from Eastern Europe. We played there Saturday night.
I didn’t have high expectations for the night. It was a drop-dead gorgeous sunny spring day here and the sun was still up when we started at 7 pm. Predictably, the restaurant was largely abandoned by hordes hungrier for a little sunlight than a little souvlaki. But things picked up as the sky grew dark and we ended up playing a full four hours.
Lots of requests. The Bulgarians had their faves and we played every one. Then a table of Albanians trouped in and we played everything on their hit list. Then the Serbs. And so on. I feel like we’ve reached some kind of landmark as a band, that people from any of those countries can come in and ask for a tune and for a whole evening we know every one. Maybe it was just luck.
But even more fascinating to me is that the Albanians were singing along on the Macedonian songs, the Serbians were requesting Bosnian songs, the Greeks were dancing to the Turkish tunes. Back home, these people are at each others’ throats - and worse - but here they are all equally adrift in foreign seas and suddenly the similarities are so much more important than the differences.
(A Serbian woman tucked forty bucks into the pocket of our sax player for playing that Bosnian song out on the floor while she danced.)
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. It’s silly. It’s juvenile. It’s dated. But it’s still one of the funniest movies ever made. (”Joey, do you like movies about gladiators?”)
