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Beats Without Borders

Balkan Beat Box’s diaspora mix

by
Sara Ivry
February 21, 2006

Ori Kaplan and Tamir Muskat are the brains behind Balkan Beat Box, an ensemble which samples and fuses everything from brass wedding tunes to Moroccan rai to create utterly infectious dance music.

Kaplan and Muskat got their early musical training in Israel, but it’s in New York that they began to put forth their own distincitve interpretation of what music from that part of the world could, or should, sound like. They explain all this and more to Sara Ivry in their Brookyln studio, just a few weeks before they hit the road with Matisyahu.

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Sara Ivry is the host of Vox Tablet, Tablet Magazine’s weekly podcast. Follow her on Twitter @saraivry.

Sara Ivry is the host of Vox Tablet, Tablet Magazine’s weekly podcast. Follow her on Twitter@saraivry.