Gypsy Punk: Towards a New Immigrant Music
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ORBIT-OnlineRepository ofBirkbeckInstitutionalTheses Enabling Open Access to Birkbeck’s Research Degree output Gypsy Punk: Towards a New Immigrant Music https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/40029/ Version: Public Version Citation: Ashton-Smith, Alan (2013) Gypsy Punk: Towards a New Immi- grant Music. [Thesis] (Unpublished) c 2020 The Author(s) All material available through ORBIT is protected by intellectual property law, including copy- right law. Any use made of the contents should comply with the relevant law. Deposit Guide Contact: email Gypsy Punk: Towards a New Immigrant Music ALAN ASHTON-SMITH THE LONDON CONSORTIUM BIRKBECK, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy July 2012 1 Declaration I certify that this thesis is the result of my own investigations and, except for quotations, all of which have been clearly identified, was written entirely by me. Alan Ashton-Smith July 2012 Acknowledgements It is unlikely that I could have written this thesis anywhere except in the unique environment of the London Consortium, and I am grateful for the opportunity to be part of its PhD programme, and for the unwavering and wide-ranging interest and advice of its staff and students. I have had excellent supervision throughout the research and writing process. Many thanks are due to Steven Connor for his enthusiasm for the project and his polymathic advice, and to Ioana Szeman for her valuable expertise and ability to tease out threads of argument from tangled text. I am fortunate that the primary subjects of my research – the members of Gogol Bordello – allow themselves to be so accessible, and thank them for being happy to talk about their work, for sharing their riders, and for throwing magnificent afterparties. The Gogol Bordello online forum, Avenue-B, has been a hugely valuable resource for its intelligent debates about Gypsy Punk. I am indebted to its creater, Alison Clarke, and to many of its insightful contributors. Finally, I thank my family for their support and belief in me, and thank Merinne Whitton for her tolerance, wisdom and love. 2 Abstract The musical genre of Gypsy Punk, in which the most significant contributions have been made by the multi-ethnic band Gogol Bordello, may appear to be simply a composite of the two elements that make up its name – ‘gypsy’ and ‘punk’. But a closer investigation reveals that Gogol Bordello are in fact engaging with a broader cultural palette, and challenged established perceptions. The figure of the ‘gypsy’ is important to the genre, but it is essential that the implications of this word are understood in order to fully grasp its significance. In addition to influences from punk and cabaret, the Balkans, and the ways in which this region has been perceived from outside, also have a bearing on Gypsy Punk. Yet none of the musicians who make up Gogol Bordello can be described as either ‘gypsy’ or Balkan, and therefore the outward presentation of the band does not reveal the significance of Gypsy Punk. This can be better understood through an examination of Gogol Bordello’s use of myth – a Gypsy Punk mythology is created not only through their music, but also through iconography, performance, and the band’s manifesto. In addition, extant myths, such as those that surround the Roma and the Balkans, are subverted in their work. However, it is the mythology of immigration that is in many ways most important to Gypsy Punk. The immigrant experiences of Gogol Bordello’s members, and the immigrant figures that appear in their work are particularly relevant in that they reflect contemporary global society. Gypsy Punk transcends the established idea of ‘gypsy’ music and functions as what I describe as an immigrant music. The mythologies that Gogol Bordello engage with serve as windows through which immigrant music can be seen and comprehended as a music with particular relevance today. 3 Table of Contents INTRODUCTION: A short history of Gypsy Punk 5 CHAPTER ONE: ‘You love our music but you hate our guts’: Romani identity and the figure of the ‘gypsy’ 17 CHAPTER TWO: Eugene Hütz and the Béla Bartóks: ‘gypsy’ music in Gypsy Punk 45 CHAPTER THREE: Immigrant punk and its antecedents: time, place and class in London, in New York, and beyond 76 CHAPTER FOUR: The Gypsy Punk Revolution: from manifesto to Multi Kontra Culti 106 CHAPTER FIVE: Balkanism and border crossings: Western and Gypsy Punk constructions of the Balkans and Balkan music 130 CHAPTER SIX: Beyond music: the mythology and style of Gypsy Punk 173 CHAPTER SEVEN: Immigrant space and immigrant music 213 BIBLIOGRAPHY: 269 4 INTRODUCTION: A short history of Gypsy Punk THE ORIGINS OF GYPSY PUNK The story of Gypsy Punk begins with an explosion. Its origins can be dated to 26 April 1986, when nuclear reactor number four at the Chernobyl power plant in Ukraine blew up, causing devastating radioactive fallout. Eugene Nikolaev was thirteen years old and lived a hundred kilometres away in Kiev. He was brought up in a bohemian family; his mother was a dancer and singer, his uncle a circus acrobat. His father, Alex, was a butcher, but he had also played in the Ukrainian rock band Meridian and, in addition, military service had provided him with experience in radio scrambling. This meant that unlike most of their compatriots, the Nikolaevs were able to listen to Western radio broadcasts. These introduced Eugene to bands like The Doors, The Birthday Party and Einstürzende Neubauten, but, more importantly, they meant that his family were able to hear reports about the Chernobyl disaster before the Soviet government had publicised it. He describes hearing about the incident on the BBC’s Russian Service: I think they were reading a biography of Jim Morrison, and instead of that there was like an introduction, “Before we get to the biography of Jim Morrison and his music, there was a nuclear disaster on the territory of Ukraine, and everybody who lives upon it might take that into consideration, and, for best results, split.” 5 And only a week later, there was an announcement on Soviet TV that something not so significant happened in Chernobyl.1 ‘My dad left’, he recalls in another interview. ‘He came back with a gigameter, which once turned on, was clicking away.’2 How the gigameter was obtained can only be speculated about, but Alex Nikolaev’s foresight and technical aptitude meant that his family was one of the first to escape the radiation. They headed to the Carpathian region in Western Ukraine, where they had relatives. It was here that Eugene learned that some of these relatives were Roma, and that he was introduced to Romani music. He saw similarities between this kind of music and the Western punk and rock he had listened to in Kiev. Rural Carpaty also turned out to be far more of a cultural melting pot than the sterilised Soviet environment of Kiev; its cultural diversity foreshadowed the kind of environment he would find when he later moved to New York.3 The Nikolaevs were able to leave Ukraine in 1989 and advanced west through Hungary, Poland, Austria and Italy, before arriving in Vermont in 1991. After a few years living in New England, Eugene moved to New York City; it was here that he would go on to form Gogol Bordello, the band regarded as the progenitors of Gypsy Punk. Gogol Bordello began in 1997 as an acoustic trio, consisting of Eugene Hütz (who had now adopted his mother’s maiden name as his surname), guitarist Vlad Solovar and accordionist Sasha Kazatchkoff. They were joined in February 1998 by drummer Eliot Ferguson, who had recently moved to New York from California. From here the band started to develop a less acoustic style, and the sound of Gypsy Punk was realised. Ferguson recounts how he made the transition from playing with brushes to using regular drumsticks for a harder sound: ‘That was really the beginnings of Gogol Bordello’4, he says. And Gogol Bordello was really the beginning of Gypsy Punk. They released their first album, Voi-La Intruder, in 1999, 1 Marco Werman: ‘Gogol Bordello’, Global Hit, The World, 2 December 2004 <http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/hppr/.artsmain/article/4/70/714022/Pop/Gogol.Bordello/ > 2 ‘Nukes. Hütz. Headhunters.’, Studio 360, 7 November 2008 <http://www.studio360.org/episodes/2008/11/07/segments/114817> 3 Susan Kessler: ‘Gypsy Punk Rocker Eugene Hütz’, Passport Magazine, July 2006 <http://www.passportmagazine.ru/article/477/> 4 DJ Scratchy: Interview with Eliot Ferguson, Scratchy Sounds (radio programme), 30 January 2008. 6 and by the next year, the term Gypsy Punk had been applied to them as well as to a handful of other bands. Gogol Bordello’s live performances soon became well known around New York for their theatricality and high levels of energy. They became associated with bars in New York’s Lower East Side, such as the Pizdetz and the Mehanata, which subsequently became mythologised in their work. It was in 2002, shortly before the release of the second album, Multi Kontra Culti vs. Irony, that Gogol Bordello were first described as ‘Gypsy Punk Cabaret’. It is unclear whether they chose this ascription for themselves – they had certainly cited all three cultures as influences – or whether it was assigned to them from outside. The term ‘Gypsy Punk’ had been applied to several other bands, including French Romani group Les Negresses Vertes, and Serbian filmmaker Emir Kusturica’s band The No Smoking Orchestra. In New York, however, Gogol Bordello came to be at the centre of the increasingly popular Gypsy Punk subculture. Multi Kontra Culti vs. Irony, which is rooted in the Lower East Side but which also draws on an array of global musical sounds, ranging from the Balkans to Latin America, can be regarded as representative of early New York Gypsy Punk.