Coming up this weekend is GoldenFest, the annual New York City Balkan Music Extravaganza. I’ll be performing as usual with Slavic Soul Party! at Midnight Saturday (at the Grand Prospect hall–5th Ave/Prospect Exp in Brooklyn) as well as at the “Official Goldenfest Afterparty” at the Black Horse, right around the corner on 5th Ave (start time: 2 AM). Come one, come all!!!

Kultur Shock has shows this month in Chicago, Milwaukee and Seattle. Then off to Paris and Berlin in October, with more to be announced soon. Slavic Soul Party! recorded at The Magic Shop in Soho last week. We look forward to a vinyl/digital download release in 2012!

But seconds before bounding onstage to perform before 300 rowdy fans on Saturday with his band Kultur Shock, Mr. Jevdjevic was choking up.

Just before the show at the DFK club, a small concert space and bar in a basement of the University of Banja Luka, he looked over the crowd. A mostly young, mostly male audience of Serbs, Muslims and Croats had traveled from all over Bosnia and Herzegovina to hear the band’s first performance in the capital of the Serb Republic.

Kultur Shock is on tour in Europe through April 17 in support of its new album, “Ministry of Kultur.” This is the band’s 24th European tour, where crowds can range from 300 in small clubs to thousands at festivals. The band rarely tours in the United States, often playing to much smaller audiences than in Europe.

The band unleashed a virtuosic mélange of punk rock, heavy metal and traditional Balkan folk music, and the audience was transformed into a mass of sweaty bodies, flailing arms and screaming voices; all momentarily living without ethnic identity, borders or tensions.

For concertgoers in Banja Luka, the Kultur Shock show provided a few hours’ relief from the ethnic, political and social conflict that continue to be part of the fabric of daily life in Bosnia, years after the war from 1992 to 1995 and the massacre of 8,000 Muslims in 1995.

For the band, the show was a chance to introduce its brand of social inclusiveness, live, to a new audience. “Kultur Shock is a good example of the unity and the friendship that was lost during the war years,” said Dusko Dutina, 23, a student at Banja Luka. “It doesn’t matter who you are or where you are from while at this show.”

Mr. Jevdjevic, who had been a pop star in the former Yugoslavia, formed the band in Seattle in 1996 after he emigrated there from Sarajevo after the siege. He came to the United States on a cultural visa with the help of the American folk singer Joan Baez, a fan of his work.

The other members cover the musical and geographic maps. Amy Denio, a self-taught saxophonist, is from Detroit. Val Kiossovski, the guitarist, was a dissident Bulgarian musician in the 1980s. The bassist, Guy M. Davis, broke into music in the 1990s with Sage, a Seattle band. Chris Stromquist, the Kultur Shock drummer, lives in New York and also plays in Slavic Soul Party. The newest member, Paris Hurley, is a classically trained violinist from Seattle.

Kultur Shock’s music falls outside most definable genres. Its Gypsy punk rock combines the aggression of heavy metal with the defiance of punk music and the yearning of Balkan folk music. Heavy-metal riffs crash into complex Balkan violin melodies; Gypsy singing floats above driving bass lines. The band’s music and lyrics strike this listener as a frenetic, heartfelt resistance to racism, nationalism and fanaticism of any kind.

“We had an identity crisis and decided to take all of the influences of who we are and make that our identity as a band,” said Mr. Kiossovski, the guitarist, who is also the band’s business manager.

Banja Luka, in the northwest corner of the Serb Republic, was an important tour stop for Kultur Shock, Mr. Jevdjevic said. Ethnic cleansing was harsh in Banja Luka. The club where the concert was performed is next door to the Ferhadija Mosque, which was leveled in 1993 by Bosnian Serbs, who then scattered the rubble. The mosque is now finally being rebuilt.

“This is the capital of the Serb Republic and mostly Serbs,” said Mr. Jevdjevic. “But I won’t play only for Serbs. I wouldn’t play Sarajevo only for Muslims. I wouldn’t play Mostar only for Croats. They have to all be together for me to play.”

Reminders of the continued strain in the country had emerged the day before the concert, when the Bosnian national football team was suspended by FIFA and UEFA, soccer’s governing bodies, from international play for refusing to cede multi-ethnic control. The soccer federation, like the country, has three leaders: a Muslim, a Serb and a Croat. The federation rejected international rules requiring a single president, and now Bosnians face the prospect of not being able to watching their national team play internationally.

“Nationalism is killing us,” said Edin Hodzisc, 23, passing a liquor bottle to a friend in the parking lot before the show. “It is literally the poison that is degrading our country.”

The day after the Banja Luka show, the band traveled to Belgrade, passing through the Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian borders to get there.

Mr. Jevdjevich had been worried that border control would hold up the band, but the trip continued smoothly.

The band performed in Belgrade at Gun Club, which is also still a working pistol firing range. The stage was littered with paper targets shot through with holes. The club was filled to capacity at 400 people, another frenzied show steeped in togetherness.

When asked about the impact 300 or 400 people a night can have on the challenges facing the Balkans, Mr. Jevdjevich was optimistic.

“It doesn’t matter that we are small right now, we have to start somewhere,” he said. “We will never make a difference unless we try.” The war, he said, had changed him and his priorities.

“When I knew I could die within the next five minutes of every day, pop stardom didn’t matter anymore,” said Mr. Jevdjevic. “After the war, I wanted no borders, no cultural differences.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/08/arts/08iht-kulturshock08.html

Kultur Shock – Tamni Vilajet from Martin Jarmick on Vimeo.

Tickets on sale now