Goran Bregovic & His Weddings & Funerals Orchestra At Prospect Park

Balkan music is pretty hip these days. There are elements in it that appeal to many ethnicities and nationalities , plus it really has a kick. I bet all those Romanian Yid families from KV would have liked it in addition to my Sephardic Peeps

Sarajevo-born Goran Bregovic is a seminal figure in the Yugoslav rock world, a film composer who has been likened to Ennio Morricone and Nino Rota, and a collaborator of artists as varied as Iggy Pop and Cesária Évora. Kicking off his first North American tour at Celebrate Brooklyn with his enormous band—featuring brass, a classical string ensemble, an all-male choir and traditional Bulgarian and Roma singers—he marries the dance music of a raucous gypsy wedding with Eastern European choral arrangements in what Spain’s La Vanguardia has called, “a mind-blowing return trip with no destination or port of arrival…a magnificent concert, one of the greatest marvels to be heard on stage today."
Goran Bregović (Cyrillic: Горан Бреговић) (born March 22, 1950 in Sarajevo) is a Yugoslav musician, from Bosnia and Herzegovina of Serbian and Croatian descent, and one of the most internationally known modern composers of the Balkans.
Bregović has composed for such varied artists as Iggy Pop and Cesaria Evora. He rose to fame playing guitar with his rock band Bijelo dugme, a group that set the groundwork for the Yugoslav rock scene. Among his better known scores are Emir Kusturica’s films (Time of the Gypsies, Arizona Dream, Underground).
Bregović’s compositions, extending Balkan musical inspirations to innovative extremes, draw upon European classicism and Balkan rhythms.
Bregović's music carries both South Slavic and Romani themes and is a fusion of popular music with traditional polyphonic music from the Balkans, tango and brass bands.
Although he is a very popular musician in Eastern Europe, Bregović has been accused on several occasions of 'stealing' original Romani and folk music of the Balkans and ultimately rewriting and branding it as his own creation.