Week Two of MVM: Most Valuable Music

Week 1 post can be found here.

This week I'm gonna go with artist, and this week's MVA, with 36 plays for an average of about 5 plays per day, is:
Gogol Bordello.

I would describe Gogol Bordello as a gypsy punk band. I first found them through the movie "Everything is Illuminated", a dramatization of the book by Jonathan Safran Foer about a boy finding a woman who saved his grandfather from the Holocaust. The front man, Eugene Huetz, played a major role in the movie, and was one of the main reasons the band's music was used.

I've recently fallen in love with the overall sound of gypsy music. It's so different from what I've grown up with, and I think it's awesome that people who used to be refugees are now touring around the world with their music. They tell the story of immigrants through haunting violin and squeezebox phrases. (squeezebox - general name for accordion type instruments) Basically the music of GB can cheer me up at any time, just because of the way Huetz's voice sounds like he's dragging the words out of his mouth by force, and sometimes screaming them at the top of his lungs. I feel like, while lots of modern music has screaming, his seems more passionate and more inspired, like there's more behind it.

Two of the main songs I've been listening to by Gogol Bordello are Underdog World Strike and Illumination. Let's focus on Illumination.

( Illumination Lyrics )

What really grabs me about this song is the overwhelming idea of you being the only person who can pick you up.
There'll be no saviors any soon coming down - So many people expect so many things to just come to them from the world, but (and this can especially be true for immigrants), there is no helping hand. They have to do everything for themselves.
And anyway illuminations / Never come from the crowned - Aah I love this line! It's always assumed that people in power know more than the common man, but hell, Einstein worked at the patent office for God's sakes. I heard a quote a while ago that went something like "the only person fit to be the leader is the one not scrambling for the position." Wisdom comes from the strangest places, and very often it's not from somewhere you'd expect.
Illuminating realization number one: /You are the only light there is /For yourself my friend - One of the main reasons I love this song. In the end, while your friends and your family and your classmates and your co-workers all try to help you, if you're not putting forward any effort to keep that light burning, it's just going to go out.

Gogol Bordello has beautiful music, and I appreciate that the gypsy punk movement has found a way to inject traditional Romani music into mainstream Western Culture. It's completely mind-blowing to hear.

I think that I listened to these guys a lot this week because I wanted something out of the ordinary. I wanted to hear something that would get me out of the monotony of classes (which kicked my ass this week). This is music that you can dance to no problem, and in fact, lots of these bands play at weddings. That's how they started. So when I'm stressed, I love hearing music that will just get me out of my own little world and make me get up and dance. I was super behind on my homework this week, and so there were many late nights. Gogol Bordello kept me awake and sane.