APRIL 20, 2009
Geo Sessions: Gogol Bordello
Gogol Bordello Drops By Nat Geo Music For A Stripped Down Set Of Songs And Stories
Watch Gogol Bordello Geo Session Here
At the very end of the 20th century, a strange new sound was emerging in New York City. Spurred by the end of the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union and an influx of new Russian, Ukranian and Eastern Europeans, the city was again the immigrant melting pot of yore. But New York had other, more recent legends and ghosts to execrcise - including the still reverberating musical legacy of punk rock. Nobody could have guessed that punk rock and the new, post-Soviet diaspora would collide head on - nobody, that, is except Gogol Bordello frontman and visionary Eugene Hutz.
Appearing weekly at the famed "Bulgarian Bar" Mehanata - just a few blocks down from now-defunct, CBGB, the incubator of the '70's punk scene - Hutz and his crew of musical pirates earned a reputation as a must-see act; mixing cabaret-style theatrics with unpredictable, anarchic, rock-n-roll intensity worthy of Iggy Pop or the Clash. Sonically, they proved that accordions and violins could unleash a punishing racket equal to any young punk's buzzsaw guitars. Hutz called their sound "Gypsy Punk" and it was good.
Now, almost a decade later, Gypsy Punk has become a genre unto itself, with dozens of bands emerging in Gogol Bordello's wide wake. Gogol Bordello has released a series of acclaimed albums and managed the difficult leap from NYC buzz band to festival circuit mainstay - while Hutz himself has also managed to find the time to carve out a lucrative film career on the side, starring in 2005's Everything Is Illuminated and 2008's Madonna-directed Filth And Wisdom.
Last year Gogol Bordello stopped by Nat Geo Music's studio and got back to their roots, playing intimate, stripped down versions of their songs - including their anthem "Stop Wearing Purple" - while Eugene told us about his vagabond life, his musical vision and what it's like to invent a whole new genre.