RIGA - There are some people out there (and quite a few in America) who, believe it or not, don't know the difference between the Baltics and the Balkans. If ever proof was needed of the vast difference between these two vastly different parts of Europe, the best place to find it could well be in their music.
Emir Kusturica and the No Smoking Orchestra are Balkan through and through. Manic, hypnotically rhythmic and totally unpredictable, their music is everything Baltic music is not. And yes, they do smoke on stage.
The group's forthcoming Riga concert could well be the best show this year. Although Kusturica's one-time friend and collaborator Goran Bregovic was only recently in town for a concert, Kusturica and his band are far better in a live element. Bregovic's music has become too polished and diluted in recent years, while Kusturica and his group retain that gritty, sweaty and altogether deranged edge that makes Balkan music such a joy.
Emir Kusturica has another day job of course. He's an internationally acclaimed director who has made such glorious films as "The Time of the Gypsies," "Underground," "Black Cat, White Cat" and most recently "Life Is a Miracle." But music is an integral part of his filmmaking, and after he parted ways with Bregovic in the mid-'90s, he teamed up with the No Smoking Orchestra to create the scores for his films.
The No Smoking Orchestra was created in Kustrucia's native city of Sarajevo in 1980 and soon became the most significant musical expression of "new primitivism," a cultural resistance movement created in the transition years of post-Tito Yugoslavia.
The band was hugely popular throughout the '80s, and Kusturica joined them on bass in 1986. In 1994 the band regrouped with younger musicians, including Stribor Kusturica, Emir's son, on drums. In 1998 the group achieved international fame when it composed the music for "Black Cat, White Cat," which won the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival of that year. The music was an irresistible mix of authentic gypsy melodies, Balkan rock and even a little techno thrown in for good measure.
After the "Side Effects" tour in the summer of 1999, which attracted more than 55,000 people to some of the band's live performances, the band recorded a new album "Unza Unza Time." It notched up huge international sales, helped in no small part by the fact that Kusturica's name now fronted the band.
More recently the band provided the music for the film "Life Is a Miracle," which was yet another glorious and effusive musical fanfare to life.
But while there's no doubting that the musicians will do their best to make it a great concert, it's just a shame that it's being held at Kipsala Hall. It's a sterile environment for such frenetic music and it doesn't leave you much room except to tap your feet by your seat. When will someone finally build a decent concert venue in Riga? The city desperately needs one.
