Brass Messengers

What an excellent way to send Romania's Fanfare Ciocarlia home, as they play their last North American date to a packed house at the Cedar Cultural Center in Minneapolis last night, September 26th.



Brass Messengers
Kicking it all off was local big brass band, Brass Messengers. They were a really large band, and the crowd loved dancing to the big sound. Their most interesting song was a cover of Black Sabbath's "The Wizard," which was played shortly before their congo-style march into the audience to close out their set.

Speaking of large band, Fanfare Ciocarlia was even larger. They all wore the same red shirts, with the exception of two band members in black. I wondered about that, maybe they didn't have clean outfits… it was, after all, a long stint touring the country, with Minneapolis on their last stop.

After three songs in, with everyone still dancing in front, Fanfare Ciocarlia's band leader said, "Let's start the party," in his Romanian accent. True enough, they got the party started.

As you can see from the setlist, they had a lot of material to work with: from "Ciocarlia Si Suite" and "Lume, Lume" from 2000's Radio Pascani to "Caravan" 2005's Gili Garabdi to the cover of "Born to Be Wild" from 2007's Queens & Kings.

Most of their songs have no lyrics, so there won't be any language barrier. If you want to have a good time dancing, Fanfare Ciocarlia is a great band to experience live.

- We Heart Music

Getting their start performing as a pick-up band in the May Day Parade, The Brass Messengers are truly a band of best friends, who have been playing together in some form for the past two decades. From parades, to rallies to national festivals, the band is atypical from other brass bands, with a joyous sound and a range of influences including Balkan and folk music. - TPT: Minnesota Public Television

The best way to describe the Brass Messengers is through a litany of basic facts -- they're a brass band, there's eleven of them, and you can see them playing around town at a number of events ranging from political gatherings to theater productions. Once you get into the attempts to describe their music in genre terms, then things get tangled: their music leaps across eras and continents, prying out the lines from between Eastern European and Romany music to fit in Latin, highlife and Americana. It's a joyous sound, and the only downside to confining it inside four walls is the fact that they're often best heard walking down the middle of the street.
- City Pages (Minneapolis)

The ecstatic refuge of a street-band celebration.

Tony Randazzo strutted around the stage in a purple feather boa. It was easy to imagine he was the middle-aged offspring of Robin Williams and Jim Morrison, high on brass -- instruments.

Tony is the spiritual leader, singer, and triangle/peck horn/E flat tuba player for the Minneapolis-based band, Brass Messengers. And the stage was part of the seventh annual Honk! Festival of Activist Street Bands, a three-day blow out of brass, drums, and color held last weekend in Somerville, Mass. Imagine klezmer, Balkan and ska music meet Mardi Gras, with bands stretching from Rome to Los Alamos, New Mexico. That's the flavor of Honk!

"The biggest thing about being an activist is to make people hear," JB McLain, a founding member of the 11-person band, told Vita.mn over the brass in Johnny D's bar, as people on stilts paraded and played music outside. "You reach people this way."

McLain first took to the streets with the Brass Messengers in Minneapolis' May Day Parade 12 years ago. "People are just blown away," he said. "They can feel the vibrations of the horn."

Indeed, the drums and the horns cut through to the soul, the colors the musicians wear uplift the spirit, and the energy of the music does carry you to a place where change is not only possible, but inevitable, both in the world, and within your self.

- Vita.MN