Slavic Soul Party at Music Haven, Sunday, July 21

Balkan-inspired New York brass band in knock-out upbeat show

“What’s ‘Slav’ got to do with it?” Slavic Soul Party leader and bass drummer Matt Moran punned rhetorically at Music Haven Sunday night.

He then answered with “People Make the World Go ‘Round,” the Philly soul anthem – as it might have sounded at a United Nations mixer pumped by jumpy Slavic rhythms and played as frantically as if curfew was about to hit.

Then, after the cryptically titled, fun-fierce “Synth Pants,” Moran mused: “What if Michael Jackson hung out with the Meters in Istanbul?” The answer was “Jackson,” introduced by Moran who explained pop music as a global thing where transcontinental influences become grooves that gallop like bebop.

Slavic Soul Party is to Balkan and Roma folk dances as Brave Combo is to polka music: caffeinated zip gathered from many nations, tossed into a blender and revved into something fiercely unified, a happily anarchic, muscular flow.

For all the brass-band pizzazz up top, SSP really rocked on the bottom, stage left, where Kenny Bentley’s tuba, percussionist Chris Stromquist and Moran himself cooked up complex beefy beats. A tiny mic on his bass drum trailed a long cord as Moran moved all over. He pulsed the right side of the drum with a mallet, tickled its left backhand with a stick long and thin as a conductor’s baton and sometimes tapped the cymbal atop the whole rig.

Accordionist Peter Stan anchored stage right, next to alto saxophonist Peter Hess, then trumpeters John Carlson and Kenny Warren and trombonists Adam Dodson and Tim Vaughn. Moran gradually introduced everybody by calling each to solo, bursting out of tight section playing to soar fine and far. Accordionist Peter Stan dazzled in an unaccompanied, all over the place, dynamic intro to “Nisovacko Kolo.” The solos flexed personality, drive and daring; and when everybody ganged up on a tune together, the effect was tidal like a big-band reed or brass section roaring unanimously to steamroll the place.

At times, as in the swinging new “Tipsy Kolo,” the whole band surged back into action even while solos were still underway – like Keith Pray’s Big Soul Ensemble often does.

Apart from “People Make the World Go ‘Round,” “Jackson” and “Tourist Point of View” (from their Balkanized mutation of Duke Ellington’s “Far East Suite”), everything was more directly Slavic.

Moran graciously praised openers Niva for playing – straight, but with spirit – the pure ethnic roots of what Slavic Soul Party pumped into pulsating, brass-band excitement.

The all-woman quartet Niva played Macedonian dances and story-song laments; the dances flowing on simpler rhythms than the narrative numbers. These resounded dark and stark, doom struck Balkan blues about brandy-induced sleep quelling loneliness, or the poisoning of nightingales, for example.

Deadpan intros by tambura (four-string lute) player Kristina Vaskys rendered these grim subjects wryly entertaining. Besides, Slavic Soul Party waited in the wings to charge onstage and lighten and lift everything.

At times, lines of dancers linked hands and slide-stepped across the dance floor up front, then roamed around the edges of the seating area, recruiting new dancers who quickly learned the steps. Or, not.

SSP Songs (courtesy of fan J.D.)

Kei Borije Kel

Real Simple

Nizo’s Merak

Vranjsko Merako

People Make the World Go ‘Round

Synth Pants

Jackson

E Borjengo

Typsy Kolo

Nisovacko Kolo

Technchek Collision