Amidst Luminato last weekend (and this), a trip to Stratford the past three days (blogs upcoming -stay tuned), upcoming Pride coverage, and much, much more, this:
I’m interviewing Goran Bregovic tomorrow. He’s playing two concerts in Toronto as part of Luminato. In the weeks I’ve spent prepping, a few things have struck me about his particular brand of noisy, raucous, joyful music -mainly, that it’s just the kind of music my father played. Being born of a family of Hungarian artists, this is the sort of thing he grew up with and absorbed, even as borders shifted, people vanished and names got changed.
What’s so incredible about Bregovic to me is the sense of possibility within his work -for a world without borders, without definition, without restriction. Language, nationality, labels… none of those things actually matter. It’s just good clean sound bringing people together for the purpose of celebration. And it beautifully integrates past and present -and future. This is earthy, real, lived-in music. And it rocks.