Immigrant Punk: Gogol Bordello and Sonic Diasporas

 

"I'll meet you 10:45 on the Broadway Canal/In a disco radical transglobal/comanja cooking up the original mixtura/s ulitzy do ulitzy the brilliant bassura/Mama---Diaspora!!!"

The above lyrics are taken from the song "Dogs Were Barking" by Gogol Bordello, and the multiplicity of languages in them, as well as the reference to "a disco radical transglobal," accurately reflects the incredibly diverse influences on that band. Perhaps because the chorus of this song prominently features the word "diaspora," I was completely unable to get my mind off of Gogol Bordello while reading about diaspora and immigrant communities this week. But there's definitely more to it than that: Gogol Bordello is a band that can easily be brought up in discussions about many topics, such as transnationalism, sonic communities, and masculinity, just to name a few.

To give some background information, Gogol Bordello is a band frequently labeled as "Gypsy punk," although that classification barely begins to describe their sound or identity; their music is a mixture of folk, punk, EDM, and reggae; their lyrics are sung in English, Spanish, and multiple Eastern European languages; and the band contains musicians from Ukraine, Russia, Israel, Ethiopia, the United States, Scotland, and Ecuador, three of whom have Roma, Chinese, and Japanese ancestry, respectively. If we are to talk about music that crosses and contests ideas of nationhood, then Gogol Bordello must be brought up. Not only does their sound and membership reflect international hybridity, but many of their songs deal directly with issues of immigration and diaspora, as their primary songwriter, Eugene Hutz, is a Ukranian descendent of the Roma people who emigrated to the United States after spending seven years in Eastern European refugee camps.

The arguments that scholar George Lipsitz applies to the Fugees in his article "Crossing Over: The Hidden Histor of Diaspora" can in some ways also be applied to Gogol Bordello, since both groups have songwriters whose immigrant identity influences and informs their music. Hutz has written songs that reference refugee camps ("Oh No"), differences and connections between generations ("My Strange Uncles From Abroad"), and immigrant communities ("Immigrant Punk," "Underdog World Strike," and lots of other songs). These songs are all drawn from Hutz's own experiences, as he came from an oppressed ethnic group in Europe and immigrated to the United States as a refugee. While many of these songs are specific to Hutz's experience, many of them also deal with larger immigrant communities, as many of the other musicians in Gogol Bordello are first or second generation immigrants. The ways in which Gogol Bordello incorporate their influences and constantly changing identities into their music and lyrics is similar to the way in which Lipsitz describes the music of the Fugees. While both groups create very different music and have very different identities, one similarity between them is the way in which their music is influenced by their respective cultures, both in their countries of origin and in the United States as immigrants. Gogol Bordello's Eastern European folk music influence represents the countries where many of its band members are from, and the lyrics of many Gogol Bordello songs are about the experiences of immigrants in the United States. In a similar way, the Fugees cover of "No Woman No Cry" from their album The Score is a tribute to the Caribbean music that influenced the group, while the lyrics of many of their songs reflect the problems that Caribbean immigrants face in the United States.

As scholar Gayatri Gopinath notes, however, in reference to South Asian music in England, many songs that reflect an immigrant experience specifically reflect the experiences of immigrant men, and this argument could also be applied to Gogol Bordello. While there are women in the band, they do take a background role to some of the other musicians. I've seen Gogol Bordello live twice, and I remember distinctly that the first time I saw them the two women in the band didn't come onstage until about halfway through the show, and they played a very different role from the men. While the men in the band were wearing street clothes (except maybe for Hutz, who was wearing some pretty crazy fashion, although I think he wears really crazy fashion all the time), the women were wearing matching tight revealing clothing. And while the men in the band were, again, except for Hutz, largely just standing there and playing their instruments, the women were dancing around and making a huge spectacle. In addition, if you go on Gogol Bordello's wikipedia page, you'll see that the two women in the band are listed as "dancers," while none of the men are. Basically, you can interpret this however you want, I'm just pointing out that the women in Gogol Bordello play a very different, largely more physical role from most of the men in the band.

I say "most," because their role in the band's live shows is actually very similar to Hutz's. During the shows, Hutz plays the guitar and sings, but like the women (who also play percussion), Hutz also does crazy stuff onstage (my favorite part of the show was when he crowdsurfed on top of a bass drum). While the two women in Gogol Bordello are largely there to put on a show, so is Hutz. Quite frankly, all of the other musicians in the band are better than Hutz. So while the gender distinctions in Gogol Bordello's live shows aren't completely clear-cut, we still have the issue that Hutz is largely the face of Gogol Bordello. He writes and sings all of the songs and is the center of the band's shows. As a result, the lyrics of many Gogol Bordello songs do specifically reflect male immigrant experiences ("60 Revolutions" is the first song I can think of that is definitely from a male perspective). While the diversity of the musicians in Gogol Bordello does reflect the fact that many Gogol Bordello songs are about the experiences of people in diasporas, we still have the fact that Gogol Bordello's primary songwriter is a man, and all of the men in Gogol Bordello are considered to be just musicians, while the two women in the band are given the status of dancers.

This blog post is really long, and I'm kind of rambling at this point. I really don't have any huge central argument, but I just wanted to point out that that there are many parallels between Gogol Bordello's Eastern European diasporic music and the Caribbean and South Asian diasporic music that Lipsitz and Gopinath discussed, both in terms of musical and lyrical influence and representation, and in terms of gender issues.


Below are videos of some of the songs mentioned above: