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His music is played at weddings, funerals & Borat, too: Goran Bregovic has thatfree-spirited Gypsy feeling

Goran Bregovic
Photo by Andrew Shpak
Goran Bregovic
Photo by Nebojsa Babic

There's something about the free spirit of what we associate with culture and customs of the Gypsies that spans and resonates with just about everyone. Maybe it's the romantic appeal of the unrestricted passionate stereotype combined with a dash of rebellious anti-establishment sentiment that draws us into our own idea of the raucous lifestyle, true or not.

Doesn't everyone want to party, in full abandonment, until the cows come home?

That seems to be the experience of anyone attending one of Goran Bregovic & His Wedding and Funeral Orchestra, at least as far as a concert hall is concerned. You may not know music of the Balkans, you may not know the language, but you will respond to the visceral rhythms, harmonies and affect.

The music mingles sounds from a myriad of different traditions — Jewish, Catholic, Bulgarian, Bosnian, Serbian, Romani and Muslim, among others — to create a mishmash of joyful tunes that are irresistible.

At the helm of the ensemble is Sarajevo-born Goran Bregovic, who is known for the musical scores of Underground, Arizona Dream, Time of the Gypsies and Borat.

In between travels and concerts, we emailed with the busy leader to learn about his upcoming appearance in Houston, set for 8 p.m. Tuesday at Jones Hall via the Society for the Performing Arts.

CultureMap: Talk a little about what a funeral orchestra is in the Eastern  European tradition. We can relate to wedding music, after all, it's a joyous occasion.

Goran Bregovic: Where I come from weddings and funerals are still the two most important events in one’s life, both on a personal and sociological level. The music that accompanies them is played by same musicians. At funerals they perform the music that the departed person liked to hear during his life. That is where I, as a composer, come from.

 CM: What happens at a Gypsy wedding? Other than the obvious, of course.

GB: The notion of time and society is different in Gypsy culture. I always envied my first trumpet player who got married in a village on the Romanian border. His wedding had six hundred guests, it lasted for three days and for which three different bands played.

 CM: Gypsy music is contagious. No matter what cultural background, it  speaks to many. Why is that? What it is about the music that makes it  universal?

GB: The music speaks to our most profound needs. Deep down most of us would like to be a Gypsy. It's a metaphor for that part of the soul which defies gravity. The Gypsies teach us about a traditional system of values when freedom was different and more precious than it is now.

The most characteristic aspect of Gypsy music is its capacity to borrow from every different tradition and culture with which it comes into contact. They believe music belongs to us all so they feel free to steal in the most natural way. Gypsies think nothing of grafting a Spanish harmony onto a Turkish melody with an odd Bulgarian beat.

  CM: Let's talk about Borat. Seriously, that movie was offensive to many  people. Personally, I thought it was hilarious. Did you worry about your  association with a film that everyone knew would be controversially  received?

 GB: No.

 CM: Well, there it is. You've recorded 20 albums! That's a lot. Do you have more in the works? Has there  been one that has been your favorite? 

GB: I am now finishing my new album Champagne for Gypsies, to be released in 2012. It is meant to remind us of our favorite Gypsy musicians who left a trace in popular culture around the world like Gipsy Kings, Ayo, Florin Salam, Stephane Eicher, also who have accepted to perform on this CD.

 CM: At what age did your love for music and performing began? Are  there musicians in your family that have influenced you? 

GB: My father was an amateur violinist and he wanted me to study violin but that hope did not last long because guitar was easier to learn and I figured that girls preferred guitar players. At 15, I started playing popular music as a professional. At 18 I had my rock n' roll band and went to play in holiday resorts in Italy.

When one is young one thinks that studies of philosophy can give you answers to the fundamental questions one asks oneself. Then one starts to study and only ends up having more questions.

So from age 20 to 24, I studied philosophy and sociology and, at the last minute when I was about to become professor of Marxist Thought — in communist times this is what studying philosophy resulted in — my record The White Button, which stayed on as the name of my band, came out and I became the biggest rock n' roll star in my country and was thus saved from the sad career of a professor.

 CM: How would you like people to feel after a concert?

GB: Happy!

CM: Well, there it is again. Short, sweet and to the point.

Presented by the Society for the Performing Arts, Goran Bregovic & His Wedding and Funeral Orchestra's concert is set for 8 p.m. Tuesday. Tickets start at $42 and can be purchased online.

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Movie Review

Meta-comedy remake Anaconda coils itself into an unfunny mess

Photo by Matt Grace

Jack Black and Paul Rudd in Anaconda.

In Hollywood’s never-ending quest to take advantage of existing intellectual property, seemingly no older movie is off limits, even if the original was not well-regarded. That’s certainly the case with 1997’s Anaconda, which is best known for being a lesser entry on the filmography of Ice Cube and Jennifer Lopez, as well as some horrendous accent work by Jon Voight.

The idea behind the new meta-sequel Anaconda is arguably a good one. Four friends — Doug (Jack Black), Griff (Paul Rudd), Claire (Thandiwe Newton), and Kenny (Steve Zahn) — who made homemade movies when they were teenagers decide to remake Anaconda on a shoestring budget. Egged on by Griff, an actor who can’t catch a break, the four of them pull together enough money to fly down to Brazil, hire a boat, and film a script written by Doug.

Naturally, almost nothing goes as planned in the Amazon, including losing their trained snake and running headlong into a criminal enterprise. Soon enough, everything else takes second place to the presence of a giant anaconda that is stalking them and anyone else who crosses its path.

Written and directed by Tom Gormican, with help from co-writer Kevin Etten, the film is designed to be an outrageous comedy peppered with laugh-out-loud moments that cover up the fact that there’s really no story. That would be all well and good … if anything the film had to offer was truly funny. Only a few scenes elicit any honest laughter, and so instead the audience is fed half-baked jokes, a story with no focus, and actors who ham it up to get any kind of reaction.

The biggest problem is that the meta-ness of the film goes too far. None of the core four characters possess any interesting traits, and their blandness is transferred over to the actors playing them. And so even as they face some harrowing situations or ones that could be funny, it’s difficult to care about anything they do since the filmmakers never make the basic effort of making the audience care about them.

It’s weird to say in a movie called Anaconda, but it becomes much too focused on the snake in the second half of the film. If the goal is to be a straight-up comedy, then everything up to and including the snake attacks should be serving that objective. But most of the time the attacks are either random or moments when the characters are already scared, and so any humor that could be mined all but disappears.

Black and Rudd are comedy all-stars who can typically be counted on to elevate even subpar material. That’s not the case here, as each only scores on a few occasions, with Black’s physicality being the funniest thing in the movie. Newton is not a good fit with this type of movie, and she isn’t done any favors by some seriously bad wigs. Zahn used to be the go-to guy for funny sidekicks, but he brings little to the table in this role.

Any attempt at rebooting/remaking an old piece of IP should make a concerted effort to differentiate itself from the original, and in that way, the new Anaconda succeeds. Unfortunately, that’s its only success, as the filmmakers can never find the right balance to turn it into the bawdy comedy they seemed to want.

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Anaconda is now playing in theaters.

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