Zion Lions: Balkan Beat Box

BALKAN BEAT BOX's primaries — saxophonist Ori Kaplan, knob twiddler Tamir Muskat and rapper/percussionist Tomer Yosef — originally hail from Tel Aviv, but the New York City band has a global sound.

The group's latest CD, "Nu Med," features rappers from Syria and Palestine, a clarinetist from Macedonia and singers from Bulgaria, Israel and Morocco, but the whole recording is steeped in studio techniques that were popularized in Jamaican music. "The dub aesthetic influenced us a lot," said Kaplan. "The Zion train goes from Kingston to Tel Aviv."

Despite the hodgepodge of influences, Balkan Beat Box's mélange sounds organic. "There's nothing forced here; it's actually very natural for us," Kaplan said. "It's a coherent style — the BBB style."

The klezmer, Gypsy and Middle Eastern sounds that the band members grew up with provide the soul of Balkan Beat Box, but modern music is its ever-thumping heart. "We wanted real modern hip-hop and dancehall beats and ancient folk artists together, and then take it outside of that world music context and put it into more of a club, dancehall, punk style," Kaplan said. "But we direct [the music] to our own region. We take it [back] to what our ears were listening to when we were born."

Like Gypsy punks Gogol Bordello, with whom Kaplan and Muskat have worked, Balkan Beat Box's high-energy music is best experienced live.

"They're pretty wild," Kaplan said of BBB's concerts. "Expect to be sweating. Drink a lot and jump around. It's a frantic party. We tear it up for two hours. Six people sound like 12 people in BBB."

» Rosslyn Spectrum Theater, 1611 North Kent St., Arlington; Thu., 8 p.m., $20; 703-276-6701. (Rosslyn)

Photo courtesy JDub Records