Name: Gogol Bordello
Members: Boris Pelekh (Guitar, Back Vocals), Pedro Erazo (Vocals, Percussion, Charango, Marimba), Ashley Tobias (Percussion, Back Vocals), Gill Alexandre (Bass), Eugene Hütz (Lead Vocal, Acoustic Guitar, Keyboards, Percussion), Sergey Ryabtsev (Violin, Back Vocals), Korey Kingston (Drums, Percussion)
Interviewee: Eugene Hütz
Nationality: Ukrainian (Eugene Hütz), Russian (Boris Pelekh), Ecuadorian (Pedro Erazo), American ( Ashley Tobias, Sergey Ryabtsev, Korey Kingston), Brazilian (Gill Alexandre)
Recent release: Gogol Bordello's latest album Solidaritine is out via Das Grand Kapital. There is also a 15 Year Anniversary Edition of their album Super Taranta!

If you enjoyed this interview with Gogol Bordello and would like to stay up to date with the band, visit their official website. They are also on Instagram. Facebook, Soundcloud, and twitter.



To create what I lack seems to be my main drive. Basically making that which seems to be missing from the world around me. If the joy is missing because of hardships, you gotta conjure up music that radiates the vitamins of joy, and if there is crisis in human understanding and communication, you create music that builds bridges by synthesizing various elements and cultures, and hopefully will get all these angry people on the same page.

As far as influences go, even a random car driving by you blasting Reggaeton may influence you much deeper than you think. In fact, in the past I obsessively collected Jamaican Dancehall and early Reggaeton as well …back when it was music you would only hear in a bodega or on Avenue C. It always gave me such a great ideas for lyrical flows and for DJ sets. No wonder both Dancehall and Reggaeton became so huge worldwide. They are boiled down into perfect forms.

In a larger sense we are all psychically connected by the field of “unconscious that's trying to become conscious,” as some call it, so consequently everything from our dreams, to external politics plays into it.

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When you feel the void for certain cultural vitamins, you envision how to compensate for it. That vision becomes the main driver, and more kindred ideas bring in a swashbuckling element, without spontaneity of which it all would be a nightmare I think.

Even though I am the principal songwriter in my band, I derive a lot of joy from what my band mates bring in, and what they contribute is priceless. Sometimes the band may transform the “finished” song majorly. A speedy anthem may become a ballad and vice versa.

DJ-ing is another mad laboratory where a lot of ideas come from, from juxtaposing styles … When you are doing a long DJ set you’re basically writing a symphony out of all those ready made pieces, and if you have the knack for sequences, a knack to see how things connect, it’s pretty mind blowing what you can get out of it. Then you take those ideas to the band.

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As far as any special atmosphere for creativity goes, I don't really depend on any of it to write. Be it ocean, street, airport, road or a simple table home or anywhere it all, it’s all served just fine as a laboratory. Especially the long flights, you’ve got your drinks coming, you’ve got time. I get a lot done up in the air.

Plus there is a downside to having the luxury of a certain fancy atmosphere. The creative urgency evaporates. Everything comes from that creative urgency to resolve certain tensions. No wonder work always falls flat in some golden cage.

Music, particularly the melody, always seems to be the chief that propels the process. The mood of the melody calls for the right words, and within the first couple of lines you start to get an idea about the jist of where the song wants to go. Melody usually comes on its own. I don't sit around waiting for it.

In fact I’m against “trying to write something.” If there is nothing coming at the moment, you haven't lived it yet to write about it. Just be ready when a new observation has ripened, and work on developing that insight or a vision. Why pollute the air with uncalled for info. Cause “data is the new oil”? Not sure about that.

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There is an incredible joy and satisfaction when a song comes together quickly. Which happens often enough. Our entire last record “Solidaritine” consists of songs that came out of the urgency of catching up with time lost in pandemic. Of course that time was not literally lost, but you know what I mean. It was a record of hyper-focus, and on getting things going for yourself and all around you. Get on the right foot, jumpstart life, get the party going again.

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The production is super crucial. And it is also super crucial not to overuse production. When we worked on Trans-Continental Hustle with Rick Rubin, it was mostly about subtracting things. Strengthening the filter and learning about brutal self-editing. I learned a lot from that process.

And as result I developed less attachment to my own ideas. You keep the strongest ones, and learn to let go of the extras with ease. It's like Buddist ego-reduction practice in a way. Just viewing them as myriads of clouds that are just passing by.

Like a basic meditation technique, you know? Some of those clouds are bigger, some smaller, some magnificent, some less so … being able to self edit mercilessly is where it's at.  

But a good measure of bad-ass production is crucial. There is an ocean of unbelievable music in the world, but American music jumped so far ahead of everyone, chiefly for technological and production reasons. Plus some early innovators like Sam Phillips and Lee Scratch Perry were true mystics and they developed techniques that were literally hypnotic.

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I don't feel any sense of emptiness after finishing something. When I finish something I feel satisfaction for the most part. And whatever didn't get fulfilled and whatever frustrations were there, they become the fuel for the next chapter the next day.

All together it’s definitely a very messy and very laborious process, but if you love it it’s super rewarding. I guess I just love the whole lifestyle of it.