Emir Kusturica and The No Smoking Orchestra

Text: Brendan Seibel

The circus is coming to town. Wielding guitars, tubas and violins the clowns are running rampant across the stage, capes streaming behind. Conducting this cacophonous consortium like a cracked carny the ringleader screams himself into a fervor. Elephants are tackling the trapeze, monkeys are flailing in the funhouse and if the audience survives this madness they'll be staggering all the way home.

Emir Kusturica & The No Smoking Orchestra are coming to town.

At first glance the group's name appears to be a blatant marketing tactic, as the Serbian director functions as a rhythm guitarist and occasional foil to frontman Nele Karajlić's antics. What quickly becomes obvious is that the spirits of both the group's stage presence and the filmmaker's oeuvre are kindred, born of a hyperkinetic aesthetic and buoyancy that revels in the most primal celebration of life. Perfectly summarized by Joe Strummer in the band's self-produced documentary Super 8 Stories, it's "this crazy Greek-Jewish wedding music of the past... and the future".

Similar to the techno-punk/raï fusion of Rachid Taha or the theatrical Finnish/Americana buffoonery of The Leningrad Cowboys, Kusturica, Karajlić and company have tossed Balkan brass and Gypsy folk into the kitchen sink. Meat and potatoes guitar, bass and drums anchor the songs while accordion and tuba waltz delicately between. Strutting over the corpses of a million six-string shredders, violin virtuoso Dejan Sparavalo conjures the Romani. Songs are stretched to grueling lengths in order to accommodate comedic interludes. Karajlić, whose pedigree includes starring in the Yugoslavian absurdist sketch show Top Lista Nadrealista, attacks his cohorts, incites the crowd, and enforces members' costume changes - on stage, while playing.

Incarnations of The No Smoking Orchestra have been stirring controversy for thirty years. Originally a reactionary resistance to Communist approved pop-culture the group has mutated from a Sarajevo comedy act to an internationally renowned madcap musical phenomenon. Factionalized and eventually dismantled during the Balkan wars, the group was resuscitated by surviving original member Karajlić. After scoring and recording the soundtrack to Kusturica's 1998 award winning Black Cat, White Cat the group adopted their current moniker and began touring in between movie productions.

December 19, 2024, at 8pm
LE ZENITH
Porte de Pantin
211, Av. Jean Jaurès
75019 PARIS 19
Buy tickets online here.