I’ll admit – I know about as much about gypsy music as any other rock nerd. Chances are, if it has a guitar and a pulse, I’m onto it.
But the delights of Gogol Bordello led me down the rabbit hole, and now I’m headed to the eccentric surrounds of The Toff (which I think reminiscent of a padded room crossed with a strip club on The Death Star) to take in some hard-core gypsy music ‘with spice’ as Paprika Balcanicus website tells me.
A diverse crowd had rocked up – young, old, the quiet and the flamboyant were dotted around the venue. Opening were local kids The Genie. The three-piece fell somewhere between a jam with Donkey Kong and Pacman playing GarageBand. Samples were piercing, the rhythm section dull and lifeless. The drummer and bassist looked like they’d be better suited to playing in a minimal rock band – while it was clear that the lanky keyboardist’s main aspiration in life is of scoring a re-make of Dune. All of this made me think: what the heck was the promoter smoking when he booked these guys in to open? The answer, I could only conclude, was SUPER-HECTIC GRASS MAAAAN!
After sitting through a set that was about as much fun as nailing yourself to a tree, I was glad to see Paprika Balcanicus enter the stage, looking dapper in their black and white formal ensembles. Paprika Balcanicus guitarist Vlad Jocic opened proceedings by saying to an empty floor: ‘This is music for dancing.’ With that, the fine foursome from Eastern Europe unleashed their fiery bohemian tunes upon us. And dance we did! Within ten minutes of their set beginning Monday felt like Friday, the workaday world having drifted miles away. The blend of traditional Romanian, Serbian and Slovenian music was taken up a notch with a liberal dusting of pure gypsy soul – fast violin solos sat aside melancholy tunes of love and loss, stomping strings laid down next to accordion flings.
It was a good thing PB modulated the tune a bit, as the room soon was stuffy with the combined respiration of writhing bodies. The whole room seemed to be moving, clapping, stomping along. Left-footed, right-footed or goofy-footed – everyone had a groove, the mighty Paprika’s serotonin-injected strings keeping us jiving. A high point was when the band played a traditional Slovenian tune – what looked like half the crowd stood up, linked arms and attempted a drunken version of folk dancing. Gold. The only thing missing was moonshine and perhaps a stripy stocking or three. Even yours truly was involved somewhat in the skirt-flipping action.
I walked out of the place warm, sweaty, converted. The moral of the story: try something new every once in a while. You might find out you like it.
