Search - Fanfare Ciocarlia :: Queens & Kings

Anyone who attended one of the New York "Gypsy Caravan" tour concerts will probably recall Fanfare Ciocarlia's unwillingness to let the evening end. After the final encore, the multi-generational Romanian brass ensemble marched and shimmied around the hall, playing hell-bent-for-leather, to the delight of exiting patrons and the dismay of exhausted venue staffers. Some of their fabled brand of antic lunacy was captured during Jasmine Dellal's recently released Gypsy Caravan documentary but the 14 tunes on this album make an even better souvenir. Famed for their intricately interwoven thematic lines and insanely fast tempos, as well as for spot-on accuracy amid what sometimes sounds like total mayhem, the ensemble meant this album to be a memorial for their late bandleader, Ioan Ivancea. With this in mind, they invited the cream of European Roma (the correct term for "Gypsy") musicians to participate, creating a breathtakingly star-studded roster. Esma Redzepova, known far and wide as Macedonia's "Queen Of The Gypsies," is here in all her clarion-voiced emoting extravagance, along with Bucharest-based pop star Dan Armeanca, Kal from Belgium, Mitsou from Hungary, Bulgaria?s Jony Iliev, plus many more. All are wonderful, each in his or her own way. The final track is Fanfare's bound-to-become-immortal cover of Steppenwolf's "Born To Be Wild," originally recorded for the Borat soundtrack. --Christina Roden