Trans-Continental Hustle is the latest album of Gogol Bordello. The album was produced by Rick Rubin, under a different label (American Recordings) and somewhere in that shift of American and world-wide fame they lost some gypsy and gained more punk. This has resulted in the traditional instruments and group vocals that are basically the essence of the band to take a backseat to drums and Eugene Hutz's voice. And I LOVE Eugene Hutz's voice, but their sound as a band does seem somewhat altered. Do others think it delivers the same gypsy-punk kick as their previous album?
HOWEVER, their new video Immigraniada is great, much better than the new Lela Pala Tute video (and I'm hating on it because I can't stand claymation, ALSO that it can't ever compare to Eugene Hutz's acoustic version of it; I'm anticipating the day they announce an acoustic album). It exhibits real experiences of the band members as immigrant workers, and it speaks to the sort of things that immigrants have to deal with when it comes to terrible immigration laws and cultural assimilation.
One of the most interesting things about Gogol Bordello is that they sometimes sing in Rromanes, a gypsy language (or rather, dialect, as gypsies are far spread throughout the world). While I also love their incorporation of Ukrainian lyrics, Rromanes has caught the attention of linguists and people studying linguistics. Portland State University has actually dedicated a class project to the analysis of the song "Baro Foro."
This link goes to a pdf file of such a study from the Portland State University, and also provides some links for a Rromanes online dictionary and grammar. It goes line by line and dissects the song into a rough English translation.
Cool right?! Maybe you need to be a linguistics nerd to really get into it...
Woo Roma Inclusion Act!
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