April 28th, 2010
NY Gypsy Festival
One of the great things about music and performance festivals is they can introduce you to a bunch of new acts. You can pick the ones you like, and follow them to wherever they might be playing next. One of the best things about festivals in New York City is that the chances of the groups coming back to the city are always very good.
Last year’s New York Gypsy Festival had that effect on a lot of people. Seder Ilhan and Mehmet Dede, the festival producers, have a long list of acts playing Gypsy music that they’ve introduced to the people of the city, and this festival is a kind of golden nugget version of what they do. Balkan Beat Box and Gogol Bordello have worked with them, to great effect, too, helping to move the notions of folklore off the table so that the Dionysian-trance effects of the violin in the music could enter the bloodstreams of the crowds. That’s changed the nature of the way we hear the music.
The funny part about it all is that these variations of the music are sometimes read as a gimmick, and really it’s not a gimmick, but the roots. No one from that side of the river has ever been able to gauge music’s pulse properly, anyway, and so it stands today in a new light, and a new dawn.
The show last year brought some familiar faces from the scene to town, with musicians like the excellent Rhythm of Rajasthan. But it also brought Little Cow to town again, and that’s sparked a lot of attention. This is a band from Budapest, also doing a mix of folk tradition with contemporary dada, and suddenly, we see we are at the crest of a wave.
There are more than enough reasons to visit the city. With the restaurants and five star new york hotels , any time of year is the perfect time. With this music in the background, however, there’s more reason than ever, and something in the pulse of India is getting into the mechanisms here, making the clocks tick a split second too fast.
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