Just a quick scan of the music blogs and it’s clear that Beirut’s recent 3-night-stand and Arcade Fire encore appearance (which hosted 72 musicians onstage) has gotten all the devotional online typists up in a huge lather, yes?
Yes, but did you know that long before Beirut was the blogger band de jour and previous to “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan” becoming an unstoppable cultural juggernaut (the films “It’s Niiiiiiiice” catchphrases soon becoming unstoppably annoying and as outdated as “Schwing!”), the indie-polka muti-culti outfit covered two traditional European gypsy anthems that found their way into Borat’s movie.
“We don’t really play [them] anymore… as we’re sick and tired of being the ‘Indie Gypsy’ band, ” Beirut multi-instrumentalist Jon Natchez tells us exclusively (please stand for 2 minutes of silence in recognition of said moment).
Natchez notes that Beirut main man Zach Cordon and the gang have moved away from vagabond whirling dervish ditties to covering the songs of perspiring Gallic crooner Jacques Brel. C’est magnifique! These aforementioned gypsy tracks are huge hits in Romanian youth-dance halls. Please proceed with caution.
While Beirut’s Eastern European-inflected canticles have yet to be utilized in bonafide cinema, according to their label spokesman, the group have recieved mutiple offers to compose soundtracks for a few unamed film directors, but timing has been an issue. However, his music has been used in tedious student films. Watch one such example here.
Download: Kocani Orkestar – “Siki, Siki Baba”
Download: Goran Bregovic – “Ederlezi”
Download: Beirut – “Fountains and Tramways” (from the Pompeii EP)