Balkan Bacchanalia at Ravinia

By Alexander Hough in Arts & Entertainment on Jun 12, 2009 6:20PM

Goran Bregovic and his Wedding and Funeral Orchestra bring their raucous live show back to Chicago for a performance at Ravinia this Sunday at 7:00 p.m.

If you haven't heard of Bregovic or if you tragically missed his 2006 concert in Millennium Park, you still might've heard his music, as it was a frequent presence in "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan." Bregovic isn't new to film music, though, having switched over to the medium after his rock band Bijelo Dugme (White Button), as well as his native Yugoslavia, broke up. His latest musical phase, performing his own music with the Wedding and Funeral Orchestra, draws on these previous paths to create a fusioned take on Slavic and Romani folk music.

But let's get back to that Millennium Park show, when the Chicago Balkan population swept downtown, flags unfurled, to hear Bregovic. His forty-plus musicians - vocalists, strings, brass band, shrieking clarinets, guitars, percussion - whipped the normally staid Pritzker Pavilion crowd into a frenzy, the aisles filling with dancing bodies, rendering first generation immigrants relatively indistinguishable from white people doing the arms-raised "Gypsy two-step," the dance of first resort for Americans hearing music originating from anywhere between eastern Europe and the Himalayan foothills. Balkan music, and Bregovic's take on it, is infectious.

For this Sunday's concert, Bregovic will bring a pared down version of the Wedding and Funeral Orchestra - a six person brass band, eight vocalists, a string quartet, and, of course, Bregovic, on vocals, guitar, synthesizer, and derbouka, a hand drum that appears in similar forms, perhaps not coincidentally, throughout the aforementioned geographic area. Bregovic's latest album, "Alkohol," released in March, keeps the spirit of the folksy dance music from his 2002 "Tales and Songs from Weddings and Funerals," while losing that album's sometimes loggy, film score-esque ballads. The upbeat tunes on "Tales" are fine on disc, but they transformed on stage at the Pritzker Pavilion. Expect a similar upgrade on Sunday.

Weather Forecast:
Good news keeps turning to bad news this week, but keep your fingers crossed: Mostly clear with daytime highs around 65 and nighttime lows around 54.

Ravinia Pavilion, 200 Ravinia Park Rd., Highland Park, Sunday, June 14, at 7:00 p.m., doors open at 4:00 p.m., $40 for reserved seating, $10 for the lawn