New York, NY · gypsy punk

Gogol Bordello

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Immigrant-punk cabaret — accordion, fiddle, and total mayhem, Eugene Hütz conducting the tent like a ringmaster on his third espresso.

Before settling on Gogol Bordello, the band was briefly called Hütz and the Béla Bartóks, a name Eugene Hütz dropped because, in his words, nobody in America knew who Béla Bartók was. "Gogol" instead nods to the Ukrainian-born writer Nikolai Gogol, whose smuggling of Ukrainian culture into Russian letters the band took as a model for its own mixing of Romani and Eastern European sound into English-language rock.

The band played its first shows as house band at a Lower East Side after-hours club called Pizdetz, with Hütz doubling as house DJ. From there it built a catalogue of six full-length albums and an EP before signing to Rick Rubin's American Recordings for 2010's Transcontinental Hustle, an album shaped largely by Hütz's move to Brazil.

Beyond the Everything Is Illuminated role, the band has been the subject of its own documentary, Gogol Bordello Non-Stop, released in 2008, and contributed music to advertising and film soundtracks, including a Coca-Cola campaign tied to the 2012 European football championships partly hosted in Ukraine.

Following the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Hütz spoke out publicly against it and pushed relief fundraising, and the band organised a benefit concert that sold out quickly. Touring has taken the group across Europe and the Americas alongside acts including Primus, Flogging Molly and Cake.

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gypsy punk