Balkan Beat Box

If you have been reading this blog regularly I apologize for the abject misery I’ve been pumping out.

I’m just starting to emerge from a funk-of-no-name, the kind of misery that makes you feel desperate but you are not sure why : there have been a few things of course, not the least of which was the sudden and shocking death of one of my young, sweet Siamese cats. Her brother has been grieving loudly and hourly since, making those dark sonorous chest yowls usually associated with Tibetan monks.  It’s a chilling heart-breaking sound and cannot be stopped with food or entreaties from those around him.

I will write about The Willow Cat in a later post but for now, it’s still too fresh.

Anyway how to pull out of a funk when one wakes up with tears in one’s eyes wondering how to get through the day?

No quick answers here but a visit to my past and recalling which (small) things have cheered me before is always helpful and a good starting point.

I notice (and do not like) that I have, in the last few years, basically not been making time for listening to alternative music, something that always excited me very much especially the Keeping-Up part which so many people of a certain age tend to ditch sometime in their late thirties. (Sweeping generalization alert!  OBVIOUSLY – I am not including any cute but grizzled hipsters with thrift-shop tweed and trilby as covered brilliantly in “While We’re Young” ) but the fact remains, many former music devotees are perfectly happy to be uninformed about current artists or simply no longer find it relevant. They are often quite proud of this too which sort of shocks me.

I was waiting to cross the street in the blazing heat of a really airless, summer afternoon earlier this year when a car pulled up, windows down and was blasting out the catchy-bass-bit of Jason Derulo’s Talk Dirty to Me.

Right there, in that moment with my filmy dress lifting slightly as I crossed the street I felt my mood switching up into third gear. Now obviously I’d heard this song before and frankly, this is the only part I like about it, because it’s full-on Klezmer which has always been extremely appealing to me. (Disclaimer: This is not my idea of Alt music! Just another kind of music I include in my own eccentric canon of favourites!)

Anyway,  a quick google search revealed that my favourite bit had been sampled from the Balkan Beat Box’s Hermetico  

I am now completely in LOVE with this band and cannot recommend enough especially for extensive cooking sessions or a little side slide in the kitchen with your morning coffee.

(Head bobbing  is optional but suggested …)

I just needed to be reminded how that felt.

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