No band can match the stage presence of Gogol Bordello, who played Oakland’s Fox Theater on Oct. 14. There’s the Ecuadorian rapper Pedro Erazo, who climbs into the crowd and makes eye contact with everyone in the pit as he spits out Spanish rhymes; the percussionist Elizabeth Sun from Hong Kong, violently bashing away on a marching band-style bass drum attached to the chest; the sage Russian violinist Sergey Ryabtsev, dancing across the stage doing ballet steps to the tune of his fiddling. And we haven’t even gotten to the lead singer yet.
This is the strength that is Gogol Bordello. Branded early in their career as “Gypsy punk rock,” Gogol’s latest album title, “Trans-Continental Hustle,” is a truer reflection of their style. In addition to its aforementioned members and their nationalities, the group also includes Thai percussionist-dancer Pamela Racine, Russian accordionist Yuri Lemeshev, Ethiopian bassist Tommy Gobena, Israeli guitarist Oren Kaplan and the drummer Oliver Charles, who hails from Trinidad & Tobago. Last but not least is the Ukrainian-born Eugene Hutz, who spent seven years of his childhood traversing refugee camps across Eastern Europe – a source of inspiration for much of Gogol’s music.
The diversity of the band is reflected in their live music. There’s the ever-popular “Start Wearing Purple,” which Hutz described as a “traditional Jewish song” at their show in Oakland. The dub reggae sound that carries influence in Ethiopian music was prominent in the opening song, “Tribal Connection,” while their closing acoustic rendition of “Alcohol” offered something for even classical Spanish and flamenco guitar fans to drool over. And it’s songs like “Tribal Connection” that really united the whole audience and band at the show I attended.
“No can do this, no can do that, what the hell can you do my friend in this place that you call your town! Yah, yah!” belted the band and the audience during the opening song. One could assume that Hutz was referring to his refugee camp or global traversing experiences or the blandness of American suburban or urban life. Regardless, the song speaks to anyone who’s felt the urge for spontaneous partying.
Gogol Bordello operates with the ethos that people everywhere just want to interact, respect each other and party (as Hutz summarizes “Yo! Community, respect and party”) and for whatever reason, these things just don’t happen enough.
That’s where the Gogol show comes in. The audience was a mix of immigrants, hipsters, older folks, frat guys, Jewish kids, 12-year-old crowd-surfers, Oakland locals and whatnot all dancing and moshing. And unlike other moshes, when someone fell over in the pit, everyone stopped, gave the guy or girl a hand, clapped and then returned to chaos. It was a beautiful, benign chaos. A person even dropped a phone in the pit and the crowd stopped to help him find it.
And what’s even more beautiful is how the party of the show continued on after the show was over.
My friends and I left the show happily running into people we met in the pit. As we started heading past the venue in the direction of the food joint, I noticed there were a couple cute hipster girls dancing on the sidewalk across from the venue to inaudible music. Still in dancing/concert mode, I felt it was just too good an opportunity to pass up. So we took a detour and dashed over to join them in the dancing. A guy with a decked-out motorcycle sound system then started blasting Michael Jackson for us from a hooked-up laptop for a brief but epic dance party.
After grabbing some food at Giant Burger, we went to hang outside the tour buses while we finished our food in the hopes that we might snag some photos with our musical favorites.
And fortunately, the timing was just right. The violinist Sergey Ryabtsev, by far the nicest guy in the group, stopped to chat with us as we snagged a photo. My Puerto Rican friend called the percussionist/emcee Pedro Erazo over in Spanish, and they chatted for a few minutes en español. And then Lemeshev and Gobena came strolling on over, uttering the magic words, “You know, we are all going to a bar down the street if y’all want to come with, just follow along.”
After some prodding from Gogol singer Hutz, we headed off toward the bar with Hutz and the tour manager. As we walked, we spoke on the street dance party earlier, to which he replied simply, “Community. Respect.” I asked him if it was really OK that a couple of fans came and partied with the band, to which he responded, “Sure thing, man. Of course, respect.”
The night took some twists, but my friends and I wound up together in the end. I may not have partied it up with the band or even taken shots with them, but that was perhaps the best night of community, respect and partying I’ve ever had. I bonded with my buddies as we ignored our academic obligations in going to the show, moshing and crowd surfing our troubles away. I fell in love with the hybrid immigrant-hipster-Oakland community that formed for a magnificent Michael Jackson dance party in the street. And to top it off, I had the closest thing to good Chicago fast food one can find out here on the West Coast.
What more could one ask for? Thank you Gogol Bordello, Oakland and my friends.