Gogol Bordello Unleashes Positive Fury

In an election cycle marked by acrimony and fractious divisiveness, the music at Toad’s on Friday — featuring international punk band Gogol Bordello, supported by label mates Puzzled Panther and Crazy and the Brains — amounted to a ragged, full-throated cry for action and greater community, with a sharp edge.

Puzzled Panther — Victoria Espinoza on vocals, Kay Bontempo on vocals and guitar, Rob Mellinger on bass, and Pedro Erazo on drums — hit the stage first at 6:30 p.m., shortly after doors opened. That early, the crowd was small, but there were people there, and the band was undeterred. ​“I see you over there, and I see you over there,” Espinosa said good-naturedly to the people sitting to either side of the stage. ​“I want you over here,” Espinosa added, motioning to the floor in front of the stage. ​“Let’s be in community.”

The people who had arrived early at Toad’s complied, and were treated to a rolling set of melodic, hook-heavy rock ​‘n’ roll full of galloping rhythms, strong vocals, well-crafted riffs, and the kind of kinetic performance that showed Puzzled Panther knew how to handle a larger club. New people entering Toad’s came at once to the floor to make the crowd bigger, and were greeted with smiles from the stage. The fun was infectious, getting people to move. By the end of Puzzled Panther’s set, the crowd was double what it had been, and getting warmer.

Crazy and the Brains — Christoph Jesus on vocals, Grace Bergere and Ernest Young on guitars, Anya Combs on saxophone, Rob Mellinger on bass, Zac Pless on drums — then leapt onto the stage to create a big sound. The band’s feet were firmly planted in punk, but tinges of ska and pop shot through all the material to elevate it and get people moving. 

With tight rhythms, expansive sax, and a frontman who worked crowd and stage with abandon, Crazy and the Brains ratcheted up the energy with tributes to New York and the band’s discovery of punk there (“If you’ve been to New York, this one’s for you. If you’ve never been, this one’s also for you”) as well as shoutouts to the band’s home state of New Jersey (“Don’t make any jokes about The Sopranos or The Jersey Shore, because we love all of that”). The songs piled on big bass lines and shout-along choruses, closing with a song, ​“Wall Socket,” that the band injected with enough energy to play all night.

The room was thus more than a little warm for Gogol Bordello — Eugene Hütz on vocals and guitar, Sergey Ryabtsev on violin and backing vocals, Pedro Erazo on vocals, percussion, and charango, Korey Kingston on drums, Gill Alexandre on bass and backing vocals, Erica Mancini on accordion and backing vocals, and Leo Mintek on guitar and backing vocals — which proceeded to set the place on fire. 

The band formed in 1999 in New York City, fronted by Ukrainian immigrant Hütz, and quickly mixed together punk, dub, and Eastern European music to create a heady, utterly contagious sound, fueled by Hütz’s madcap onstage persona. In the past 25 years the crew has undergone a few personnel changes but shows no signs of slowing down, and at Toad’s it was easy to see why.

It began with the crowd, now fully multigenerational, ranging from teenagers to people in their 50s, women and men, of many colors and creeds. From the first, explosive beat, and Hütz’s instructions to scream, people began moving, then pogoing. A few songs in, three swirling mosh pits formed. But still Hütz egged the crowd on. 

“This is a Gogol Bordello show, so wake the fuck up, everybody!” Hütz said. 

The instruction felt equal parts musical and political. The politics were embedded in the lyrics; Hütz’s verses are often outspokenly pro-immigrant, reveling in the cultural churn that waves of immigration create. But even more deeply, that wild embrace of diversity courses through the music itself.

When Gogol Bordello formed in 1999, it was at a time where, thanks partly to the internet, partly to adventurous record stores, and partly to changing tastes, it had been much more possible for people in the U.S. to get access to music from around the globe — lots of it — than in previous decades. For several years around then, uncomfortably, much of this music was categorized as ​“world” music, meaning simply music from anywhere besides the U.S.

With hindsight, there is much to criticize about the marketing ploy of dumping all the world’s music in the same bin, from Senegalese dance music to Azerbaijani singing to Indonesian gamelan orchestras, as if it were all one exotic mélange. Savvier listeners learned fast to have keener ears than that, and they have become much more savvy since then. As access to music has only grown, people who want to listen to music from across the globe have begun to appreciate far more the differences great and small among musical styles than the similarities — the things that make each style unique.

But in 1999, Gogol Bordello’s music tapped into, and still taps into today, one of the small but powerful benefits of putting all that music together, one that has persisted at least since the 1970s. In comparing music from all over the place, a narrative of resistance can emerge about the common struggle many people face, from country to country, continent to continent: the suffering people endure, the resilience they have, the lengths they’re willing to go to improve life for themselves, their families and friends, the greater peoples they come from. 

Gogol Bordello’s sound — crafted from Eastern Europe and punk, with distinct Caribbean and Latin flavors thrown in for good measure — drew its strength from that narrative. The call for solidarity that was the backdrop for the band all night was, on one level, explicitly about Ukraine’s current resistance to Russian invasion. But it was also a call for all peoples fighting for better lives to come together. That call was angry, but beautiful and cathartic in its anger. It was explosive but not violent. It turned negativity inside out, into joy, until the crowd several layers deep around the stage was pulsing with smiles and action.

As Hütz said in introducing a new song, ​“it’s about fighting separation and the politics of separation. It’s about fighting all the cynicism out there. We mean it.” Each song ramped up the energy more and more, until the set reached the 2010 song ​“Immigraniada (We Comin’ Rougher),” and for those immersed in the crowd, the energy seemed high enough to shake the place apart at the seams.

The feedback loop from band to audience and back again was then complete, and another relentless set of music passed with no sign of anyone stopping. Each of the band members had their time to shine, with solos extended enough to occasionally join the audience. The crowd kept surging forward and back, an infinite wave. 

“New Haven, you’ve been awesome. Don’t give up on yourselves now! You’ve got this!” Hütz declared, by that time needlessly. If anything, no one in the audience was willing to leave, until the band at last brought down the energy during an encore, invited members from previous bands to join them, for a few last songs, full of hope. The quietest one — a dramatic departure from the musical fury that preceded it — had a simple, repeating refrain: ​“When the sun comes up / it will be on my side.”