Canadian band Beyond The Pale (not to be confused with the Melbourne-based rock poster people) are beyond lots of things. The pale, certainly. Their music could hardly be more richly, or colourfully, rendered. Beyond klezmer. Beyond country. Beyond art rock. Forget about genres. You can't put these boys in a box. Nor their ethnicity. An Irishman on Aus jazzman Jon Zwartz' bass, borrowed for the occasion, in Brett Higgins. Jewish-Canadian Eric Stein, genial founder and leader, on mandolin and, occasionally, lead vocals. A Dutchman, by extraction at least, in Martin Van De Ven, on clarinets. Dan Budmir (if I heard correctly), one of two Serbians, on accordion. And Aleksander Gajic, the other Serb, on violin. I understand that, much as their was a fifth Beatle, there's a sixth Pale, in Bogdan Djukic, who also plays violin, as well as percussion. Keeping the seat warm in the latter capacity was young virtuoso, Nicola Oshher; our very own.If you have to label them with something (you're incorrigible), you'd probably sticker them with klezmer and east European folk music band, as they do. Their gig at Yaron Hallis' increasingly famous and successful Camelot, in the formerly unlikely city-fringe suburb of Sydnenham, began in that vein, on this the first date of their debut Australian tour.
If memory serves, BTP opened their first set with a dina. Sounding even a little down-home to begin with, it soon took on the familiar form and character of a dina, or doina, found in both Romanian and klezmer music. Traditionally, a doina is poetic and imbued with sadness, but this rendition seemed to have a liveliness about it. Not that the those parameters are necessarily mutually exclusive (as evidenced in other tunes, which meld forms).
Immediately to the fore were the individual and collective virtuosities of these musicians, who clearly command the requisite passion for such music, too.
A bulgar, 'in C, in case you're keeping score', proved achingly romantic, but picked up pace as a hora (a dance originating from the Balkans, but found in other countries and which became a national dance in Israel).
Diaphanous Charms is an original and it must be said that, for mine, their originals are far-and-away their best and most interesting pieces; this tune written by Brett Higgins and allowing plenty of room for very satisfying solos. It's in BTP's originals, perhaps moreso than anywhere else, that their multifarious musical backgrounds show through.
Then it was Jewmaican music: Hassin Jah, if I heard right; which, if my Hebrew 101 and rudimentary Rastafarian are serving me well, translates as strong god. I guess it's what Marley would've sounded like if he'd been born in a Bukovinan shtetl, rather than a village like Nine Mile. In any case, it featured a soaring clarinet solo.
Sensitive, sympathetic percussionist Ossher joined the boys for a piece in 11/8 (yeah, but can you dance to it?), which bore, to these ears anyway, a strange and uncanny rhythmic resemblance to Iggy Pop's Lust For Life, as well as featuring blistering solos, across the board.
A sultry slow-dance followed; a warm embrace, distinctly Mediterranean in sentiment and aesthetic. An upbeat klezmer tune; then something truly eccentric, from the pen of Irving Fields, a New York piano-player perilously close to a century, not out, still playing six nights a week and who made a series of novel, or novelty, albums in the 50s, beginning with Bongos & Bagels (or the other way 'round), an unlikely meeting of Jewish and Latin music. Then, I believe, Bagels & Pineapple, Bagels & Pizza and, for all I know, Rocks & Bagels. He also released an album named Melody Cruise Around The World, recorded on cassette, in his loungeroom. From this comes Turkish Delight, which BTP have made their own. It's as tokenistically Turkish as you might expect; kitsch, and loving it! It's also, for all its would-be Ottoman flavour, quintessentially, inescapably inimitably, incorrigibly Jewish.
Another original, in Split Decisions, from the most recent disc, Postcards, started as a jazz-inflected piece built on an insistent violin motif, but mutated into bluegrass, albeit with subcontinental rhythmic influences. The next tune picked up on similar flavours, starting life as a real country number that could've come from Nashville, or Hicksville, but which, again, couldn't quite separate from its clingy Jewish cousin, making for something more like Schmicksville.
And that was just the first set. The second brought Hungarian gypsy music and bowed bass; a musical collage redolent of Dixieland, zydeco and swamp blues (somewhere 'twixt 'n' 'tween the bayou and the ghetto); a rough, but charming guide to Yiddish theatre luminary Aaron Lebidev's 'Oy, I Like She', more about kissing cats than kissing cousins, which Stein sang in Caniddish. Then, as you do, Mozart, in the form of his twenty-fifth symphony (which you may well know, you aficionado, you, as the tune that opened Amadeus and which set off the under-reported Wolfman craze of '83). I know what you're thinking. 'Oi weh! What a gimmick. And so cheap!' Gimmick, schmimmick. This isn't just a cheap trick, but a careful, thoughtful, respectful reinvention, a spirited homage, funked-up and wonderful.
Another original betrayed an Irish lilt, at last; fragile, beautiful and, like one or two others, very cinematic, in its open, sweeping, floating, flying nature, with a kind of oceanic momentum, giving way to a contrastingly strident, proud, Balkan tempo and temperament, informed by sadness and long suffering. Then to a Serbian gypsy tune and a kind of country-jewzz-blues encore. Stein insisted everyone dance for the very last, but he needn't have: the music was insistent on its own behalf.
I'm not sure what this music is. But I know it fits very comfortably into the better of Leonard Bernstein's two kinds of music. Is it Jewzz? Contemporary klezmer? A bird? A plane? I don't know. But I know what I like. It's Beyond The Pale.
Beyond The Pale
Venue: Camelot Lounge | 19 Marrickville Rd (Cnr Railway Pde), Marrickville
Date: 31 March 2011
Visit: Camelot Lounge website
ALSO touring
www.beyondthepale.net
