It’s not an easy city for anyone, and for bands trying to do something different, it can be incredibly rough.  This is a testament, then, to the fortitude of the groups that have been making inroads in developing a public taste for these new kinds of music.  Gogol Bordello would, of course, be on the top of most people’s lists.  The Balkan-influenced music is as infectious as the live shows, which are part old-school punk revivals, and part shamanistic investigations into the audience’s capacity for joy.  There are other bands working in a similar vein, but the music is still very different.  Just as there are many roots for the Romany people, there are many varieties of their musical offspring.

Golem calls themselves folk-punk, and the music is raging and wild.  It is a sound that always borders somewhere between ecstasy and madness, and they play that uncomfortable space in between to make sonic bursts of manic joy.  Outernational on the other hand, is much more focused on incorporating everything in the world, and their rhythms work from some Gypsy sounds, but tend more toward a very politicized global rock with ska inflections.  These New York bands are survivors from other places, and their durability here only increases their already magnificent street cred.