Balkan Beat Box blends electronic music with hard-edged folk music from North Africa, the Middle East, the Balkans and Eastern Europe. The group was formed in 2004 by Ori Kaplan, former member of Gogol Bordello, and Tamir Muskat, producer of J.U.F.'s "Gogol Bordello vs. Tamir Muskat" and drummer for Firewater and Big Lazy.
Balkan Beat Box is the natural reaction of passionate musicians that demand the erasure of political and geographical divisions in music. While breaking down these borders, the band has created a new, unique sound that brings people together on dance floors all over the globe. Balkan Beat Box has steeped their music in a lifetime's worth of research into their own non-Western roots. A quasi-circus event, BBB performers collaborate with artists from Bulgaria, Morocco, Spain, Israel, and Turkey, all of them drawing on a variety of styles from around the world. Every event keeps the audience guessing what the next surprise will be.
Having played live in so many drastically different locales, it is hard to keep them all straight. From Mexico City to Berlin, Osaka to Istanbul, BBB never fails to delight their excited fans. "What makes it a dance floor experience are the beats combined with soulful melodies that want to make you move," says Tamir. "That's a fatal combination for us." To date, BBB has played to massive crowds at Bonnaroo, Lotus Festival, Roskilde, and Central Park Summerstage. They have appeared on Al-Jazeera, NPR, WXPN, PRI's the World and in SPIN, Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.
Balkan Beat Box's 2005 self-titled debut album, out on JDub Records, was hailed by The Denver Post as "a sonic masterpiece." Their exciting melange of international sonic rhythms and ideas ignited a huge following among global music fans. Their followup, Nu Med, has sold over 10,000 copies in the US. Having permanently added MC Tomer Yosef to the mix, Nu Med ultimately succeeded in delivering the indescribable energy of BBB's intense live show to the studio. The 2009 release of remix album Nu Made celebrates BBB's past two records while still preserving their dynamic ability to make the organic electric.
Though Balkan Beat Box is comprised of a constantly-rotating cast of musicians, the band currently features Ori Kaplan on saxophone, Tamir Muskat on percussion, Tomer Yosef on vocals, Jeremiah Lockwood on guitar, Itamar Ziegler on bass and Peter Hess on saxophone.
