Music Style BALKAN GYPSY FUNK

Musical Influences BALKAN GYPSY

Group Members Gino Srdjan Yevdjevich - lead vocals and percussion John Morovich - accordion, tambura and vocals Mario Butkovich - lead guitar Brad Houser - bass guitar and saxophone Borislav Iochev - drums and percussion

Albums Live in Amerika

Press Reviews The Stranger, Seattle January, 1999. Most of Kulture Shock is from the former republic of Yugoslavia (Critters Buggin's Brad Houser is on bass), and fortunately they were able to outrun the dogs of war. Free from these hardships, they're takin' their rumba-fueled gypsy rock to the stage with an energy and level of musicianship rarely seen around these parts. Moreover, musical gumbos always go down better when served up with attitude , and Kulture Shock's punkish flair hits the spot. Anything is game for Kultur Shock, so don't be surprised if you hear some rock, funk, or blues-styled numbers. Like gypsies, they go for a soulful gumbo and passionate vocals. Simply put, these guys are great (especially the singer and guitarist), and we're lucky they ended up here Seattle Times, Entertainment News : Thursday, April 22, 1999 Club Watch: Doom of Balkan war absent from Kultur Shock's music by Tom Scanlon Special to The Seattle Times Srdjan "Gino" Yevdjevich pulls back his long, sweat-drenched hair and takes a long swig of beer. It's Friday night at the Rainbow Bar & Grill, and the charismatic singer has just led his Gypsy-funk band, Kultur Shock, through a typically energetic, joyous set. The ethnic cleansing, refugees and bombing in Yugoslavia are chilling echoes of what the members of this Balkan band went through in Bosnia. Yevdjevich, who has many relatives in Yugoslavia, lived during the war in downtown Sarajevo, where "you could be sitting in a bar like we are now and you never know if a bomb is going to blow you up." "You get used to it," he adds with a shrug. Sitting across from Yevdjevich, Mario Butkovich - clean-cut and bespectacled - quietly drinks a cocktail. Asked how he learned to play "Gypsy guitar," as he calls it, he nonchalantly says, "During six years in a refugee camp in Croatia." Yet the music of these war survivors and refugees is utterly devoid of gloom or doom; on the contrary, a Kultur Shock show has the wild optimism and unbridled hedonism of the three-day Gypsy weddings that Butkovich once played. "Kultur Shock is about music," says Yevdjevich, who sings in Bosnian, Bulgarian, Romany, Croatian, Serbian and English. "It's not about capitalizing on unhappiness." Yevdjevich has been living in Seattle since 1996, when his play "Sarajvo: Behind God's Back" was produced by Seattle's Group Theatre. Kultur Shock has been playing locally since then, steadily attracting a following. The band recently released its first CD, "Live in Amerika," a collection of Balkan folk standards recorded at the Crocodile Cafe. Kultur Shock performs at the Tractor Tavern on Saturday (9:30 p.m., $6). If it is anything like previous shows, the crowd will dance wildly to Gypsy music played with rock intensity - and a sense of immediacy. "What Kultur Shock is about is singing right now," says Yevdjevich, part clown ("South Park" T-shirt, goofy onstage presence), part philosopher. "Who knows what later will be? We learned to live in the moment, during war." www.earpollution.com, Seattle May, 1999. Robert Zverina One of the things I love about music these days is the limitless combinations one hears; from African Salsa to Japanese Turntablists, few arenas of personal expression have benefitted from 20th century cultural diffusion--whether through benign telecommunications or violent political dislocation--more than music. Maybe that's because it is a universal language free of the barriers of meaning and interpretation. It crosses boundaries, often dissolving them in its passage. Kultur Shock is often billed as "Gypsy Balkan Funk" for three good reasons: 1) At times they strut and rap with all the bad assitude of the Freaky Styley-era Red Hot Chili Peppers. 2) Their accents, traditional instruments, and multilingual playlist mark them as recent émigrés from the Balkans. 3) They are gypsies. Maybe not Gypsies in the ethnic sense, but certainly in the spiritual sense. As gypsies move from country to country following good weather and opportunity, so does Kultur Shock visit a variety of musical genres from which they borrow without putting down roots. Funk, blues, rock, folk music from far off lands, and even a few licks of jazz, provided this night by a guest saxophonist, [that would be the lovely jessica lurie. --ed.] combine as seamlessly as a late night youth hostel conversation where no two people speak the same language but everyone laughs a lot anyway. They convey a sense of joy which can come only from having lived through sorrow, and tonight was especially joyous because they were celebrtating the release of their first CD, Live in Amerika. The crowd was packed a lot tighter than when I saw them open for Plastic People of the Universe at Sit-n-Spin (that's to be expected when Krist Novoselic's Sweet 75 is the opening act), but people still found room to dance, which is what Kultur Shock's jumpin' tunes insist you do. The set careened from runaway locomotive rock to haunting folk ballads to their showstopping deconstructionist cover of "Wild Thing," which singer Gino Srdjan Yevdjevich announced would "be playing on MTV next week." The subtleties of sarcasm are hard to detect through an accent (English is Gino's 6th language) so I couldn't tell if he was serious or if this was just another ironic taunt in the spirit of the evening's introduction: "We are Kultur Shock and we're here to take your jobs." While it's this attitude which makes Kultur Shock shows refreshingly confrontational, it's their infectious high spirits and energy which alternately get people dancing in circles holding hands or jumping up and down with their fists pounding the air. A carnival atmosphere surrounds this merry band of travelers who seem to be just passing through. They throw themselves into their music with a reckless abandon that doesn't care if there's anything left for the sunrise because by then we could all be dead. As long as you have a good time, drink some Slivovitz (in abundant supply this night) and above all dance, then they have succeeded. And tonight they did.

Location Seattle, WA - USA

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