Consumer Guide Album

Balkan Beat Box: Blue Eyed Black Boy [Nat Geo Music, 2010]
Give these Brooklyn immigrants credit for holding off on album three till they had enough songs to put meat on their Israeli-Palestinian-Gypsy world music of the mind, and enough ideas to lift its spirit. Instrumentals called "Kabulectro" and "Balcumbia" triangulate their ambitions. There's live Gypsy brass and fabricated Gypsy brass. There's an anti-racist reggae and an anti-gun reggae and one called "Buhala" that's haunted by chants from some souk at the end of the unmarked road. There's even a love song: "Dancing With the Moon." Sashays along over organ and castanet sounds. Ends with dubbed-up horns. A-