Mercury Cafe Celebrates Jewish Klezmer, Balkan Music With Festo Festo

Live music abounds in Denver, but there's nothing quite like Festo Festo.

The monthly gathering of musicians, dancers and artists showcases Jewish klezmer music and a wide range of Balkan musical traditions, but that prosaic description hardly does justice to the joyfully raucous reality. Hosted by the Mercury Cafe on the last Thursday of every month, it's part dance party, part concert series, with violins singing, horns blasting and dancers of all ages kicking up their heels arm in arm. When we visited last month, even the Merc's waitstaff were cutting a rug on their shifts.

The celebration is conducted by two local bandleaders, Eitan Kantor of Upsherin and Tung Pham of Gora Gora Orkestar, whose groups are at the center of the vibrant Denver klezmer/Balkan scene. Klezmer is a dance-heavy Jewish music tradition in which Upsherin specializes, Kantor explains.

"Much of it is functional music, so music designed for weddings and other celebrations and designed for dancing," says Kantor, who is also the music director for the Hebrew Educational Alliance synagogue. "Klezmer comes from the [Hebrew] words k'lei zemer, which means 'a vessel of song.' ... Traditionally, the word 'klezmer' did not refer to a musical genre, but rather the person that is playing the music. The person becomes a vessel of song in klezmer."

Klezmer includes instruments such as violin, clarinet, tsimbl (a kind of hammer dulcimer), voice and accordion. It also has a distinct geographic overlap with other non-Jewish Eastern European musical traditions. Kantor had long been a student of the traditional genre, but it wasn't until he moved to Colorado that he discovered how much he enjoyed playing it live.

"I was really into Jewish music in the context of the synagogue. I had not, however, really experienced it as a thing that people would want to dance to in the bar or at a party," he explains. "And once I came to Colorado and met [other Klezmer musicians], I was like, 'Oh, wow! This music is so fun!'"

He met Pham, a trumpet player — Denver East music teacher and leader of the Balkan brass band Gora Gora Orkestar — while working a Jewish wedding in 2018. They soon bonded over a shared interest in Eastern European music.
"The klezmer music that we're talking about is from Eastern Europe, and the Balkan music that [Gora Gora Orkestar plays] shares a regional space," explains Pham. "The music Gora plays is from Bosnia, Herzogovina, Romania — everywhere up and down the Balkan Peninsula. ... It's just a really nice convergence of two different cultures that are somewhat disparate but kind of not disparate. We found a way to share musical space."

Festo Festo "2.0" is approaching its one-year anniversary after a long pandemic-inspired hiatus. The first official show was in February 2020, and "was a hit," remembers Pham. "It was really well attended, and I think we had a couple of them right before COVID hit, and then, boom, we were in quarantine and we had to pause the whole thing for two years."

If anything, the pause has intensified Pham and Kantor's desire to share the celebratory music showcase, which returned in July 2022. "That's when we first started being like, 'Okay let's get this thing back,'" says Pham. "'Let's start to actually feature bands and get guest artists to come in and work with us and start to build forward momentum.' So we've been doing them almost every month since then and featuring different Colorado artists."

In addition to their groups, which play every Festo Festo, each event showcases other area bands with related styles. "It's actually been really lovely, turning the attention toward our colleagues," says Pham. "We've been lucky enough to be in a very vibrant music scene that features quite a few musicians who are interested in klezmer music and Balkan music as well as Balkan dance."

"It's such a rich scene in Colorado, between bands like Hal Aqua and the Lost Tribe and Barbelfish and the Boulder Klezmer Consort and Planina," adds Kantor.

The convergence of musicians turns into a big party, with circles of dancers crowding the floor, spectators clapping and cheering over their dinner plates, and musicians sucking down pints of beer between breaths.

"One of the best parts about Festo Festo is how much dancing happens," Kantor says. "We've had a lot of attendance and support from the folk dance communities around town, so we really get to play this music in the context that it is originally intended, which is playing for dancers."

Another highlight of the evening is the closing all-band jam, in which every musician comes back to pack the stage and play together.

"We also always conclude with a big community sort of jam session where we try to get everyone involved," says Pham. "Not just the musicians who are featured in the event, but community members as well, to sing, to dance, to bring an instrument and play with us. It's a whole thing."

In June, the guest artist is Korvin Orkestar, a Balkan brass band from Santa Fe. Kantor and Pham are also actively looking for other artists to schedule, as well as potential sponsors. Festo Festo is free to attend, with a suggested donation of $10 to $20, and the duo says it has a lot more music and fellowship to share.

"It's a great thing to be a part of, where you are experiencing something that you may not be able to see in other spaces in Denver and that is so celebrated the way that it's celebrated at Festo," says Pham. "We come out with a real sense of joy and purpose that is really translatable and is really relatable to people of all generations. ... Man, it's just such good vibes."

Festo Festo, last Thursday of each month, Mercury Cafe, 2199 California Street. Admission is free with a suggested donation of $10 to $20.