Gypsy Muzica for Dancing & Dreaming by Romashka

The musicians have traipsed around Eastern Europe and the Eastern European enclaves of NYC collecting and imbibing local folk music and culture.

Mashke is Yiddish for "liquor." This is party music that burns in the belly. Romashka has roused crowds from BAM Café to the Bulgarian Bar, from weddings to late-night house parties that have shaken the walls and drawn the cops. "If you really want a challenge, try sitting still while Romashka plays!" (Michael Ginsburg, Zlatne Uste Balkan Brass Band).

Romashka is Russian for "daisy." Next to raucous dance numbers you will also find aching, world-weary love songs, as sweet and unexpected as a flower in a parking lot.

Romashka detonates its signature Gypsy bacchanalia into this debut album. Count down for music with deep roots and fierce vitality, showcasing both technique and attitude, pulsing between seventh heaven and the nine circles of hell:

8. Moldovan Batuta, from the hellish little nation between Romania and Ukraine.

7. A Russian Gypsy medley of Zaznobila - a heart-wrenching tale of lost love,

and Baro Faro (Great City) - in which love is found again.

6. Rustemul - a grungy purgatorial Romanian dance.

5. Sinfully jolly Romanian bar song La Circuma de la Drum.

4. Confessional Russian tango Tayna in which the Secret is you.

3. Shimdiggy -an original mixing moist New Orleans with dusty Romanian roads.

2. Seductively Eden-esque Russian Gypsy ballad Loli Phabay (The Red Apple).

1. A jazzed-up version of Fanfare Ciocarlia's Romanian classic Mariana.

This debut album was recorded on January 23, 2005 at Vibromonk in Williamsburg, Brooklyn by Tamir Muskat (Balkan Beat Box) and features

Inna Barmash: vocals

Jake Shulman-Ment: violin

Jeff Perlman: clarinet & saxophone

Ben Holmes: trumpet

Stevhen Iancu: accordion

Joey Weisenberg: guitar

Ron Caswell: tuba

Timothy Quigley: drums & percussion

Average Customer Review: 5