On a frigid December night I squeezed into the Sub T Lounge in Wicker Park to warm up beneath the undulating Balkan rhythms of Black Bear Combo. A major player in the brass-band renaissance that's taken over Chicago's alternative music scene, Black Bear is a six-man outfit that infuses eastern-European party music with jazz, rock and funk influences. As you can imagine, this is a recipe for sheer dance madness. I've seen Black Bear at a few clubs around town, but they also play weddings and funerals--the latter being perhaps problematic, as the band's sounds are so infectious the departed might be prompted to climb out of the casket and get down with his bad self.
Most of the group's tunes are originals penned by saxophonist Doug Abram; he gets avid, athletic support from Rob Pleshar on sousaphone, Gerald Bailey on trumpet, Andrew Zeim on euphonium, Dersu Barrows on bass drum, and Eshan Ghoreishi on accordion and daf (Persian frame drum). The rhythms are all fast, and all delightfully sinuous, but still utterly distinctive; within the admittedly narrow boundaries of the sound world Black Bear Combo has staked out, they manage to mine endless variety. Over the course of the evening they may edge towards tonal anarchy, or achieve a sweetness you might almost call refined; but they never repeat themselves, and they never flag. And you, humble patron, never get the chance to sit down and take a breath. What the hell, life's too short for breathing anyway.
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