Inspector Gadje’s show at the Rickshaw Stop was one of the most memorable pre-COVID concerts I attended.
The San Francisco Balkan brass band, made up of 12 stellar brass musicians and two percussionists, packed out the small club. At the center of the action was rock-star clarinetist Ismail Lumanovski, who fired off solo after solo, and used his instrument in ways I didn’t know were possible (he even made it “scratch” like a turntable, like Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello does with his guitar). Bilingual rapper Deuce Eclipse came out as a surprise guest and hyped the crowd with verses in English and Spanish.
You might not think hip-hop would go with sousaphones and baritone horns, but the global, West-Coast-meets-Romani musical fusion on stage inspired a wild dance party I haven’t stopped thinking about since late 2019.
