Goran Bregovic Shakes Avery Hall

I think it started with the Serbian girls sitting next to me.  One stood up in her seat and began swaying her hips and clapping in rhythm.  The other two joined her, oblivious to the people pointing and smiling.  How could they? This was a concert hall!  This was the Lincoln Center and good money was spent to sit and watch Goran Bregovic’s Wedding and Funeral Band.   Yet the horns called, more people stood, and soon the aisles were full of women, and a few men, holding hands and dancing to the infectious Balkan brass sounds as Bregovic played songs from both his albums and his many film scores including Underground, Arizona Dream and Time of the Gypsies.

While  Goran Bregovic hasn’t performed in New York City since his 2006 debut, he's a star in Europe, and Avery Fisher Hall was packed with Eastern European fans on Tuesday night singing along, a stark contrast to the speckling of season ticket holders and older arts patrons.  I watched as one old woman, her face heavily made up, hair neatly coiffed, and head weighed down by enormous jewelry, glance suspiciously around as people continued to squeeze past her in an uncontrolled drive to dance.  Every so often I would look back until, finally, about two-thirds of the way through, the matron's face beamed and she was shaking her boney butt in her seat to the song, “Gas, Gas, Gas.” 

Hell, I was dancing.  My date had ditched me to say hi to some friends he knew from Mehanata (also known as the Bulgarian Bar) and we agreed later that perhaps that sort of place would have been a better venue to hold the show.  Apparently, when Bregovic was here last (also for the Lincoln Center Festival), he also had the crowd dancing in the aisle. You think the staff would have prepared for it.  Bregovic himself appeared to love the energy, but twice asked the audience to sit down in order to give absolute attention to the somberness of his song, “So Nevo Si” and “In the Death Car.”  Though they were surprised, they sat, but quickly they were up and dancing again.

Two Bulgarian women singing in traditional garb accompanied the eight-piece band.  Singer and drummer Alen Ademovic had one of the best voices I have ever heard, though a quick search for him on youtube produced a hilarious tribute to the sexiness of the man, not his voice. On the second ring a very pregnant woman in a red dress got her groove on.  In fact, all the rings were packed with dancers.  From high-heeled ladies in fancy dresses to a little girl swinging her American Girl doll to the vibrating floor when the crowd insisted on an encore—which we got for about 30 minutes—this show turned out the most surprising and fun things I have seen all year.