The 333 Best Pop Songs of the 2000s: #205

#205: "Bulgarian Chicks" (2005) - Balkan Beat Box featuring Vlada Tomava & M. Alexiava

We bid adieu to Africa, and we continue our northward trek, landing this time in Israel where Balkan Beat Box are performing. We ask co-founder Ori Kaplan what he's doing so far from his Brooklyn home, and he tells us that he and drummer (and co-founder) Tamir Muskat both hailed from here. We ask him Kaplan what his native brethren think of his tainting his Jewish heritage by creating this abomination of traditional, sacred klezmer by adding hip-hop and street beats and those Caribbean horns with the jazz arrangements. Kaplan told us that he wasn't defiling any sacred music style, that he was trying to create one of his own. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we said, whatever, but who's that hot chick singing, she's fabulous, especially the "Whee!" she exclaims at the end of the chorus, 'cause it's pure joy, an exhultant exclamation brought about by the mixture of the sacred and the profane. Kaplan told us that she just sings with us on occasion. On occasion? Oh, I understand. No women in the band, right? I certainly understand that, I told him, but I see where you're coming from, if only every-now-and-then some singer just happens into the studio, then she's not officially a member, so the missus doesn't get mad, and the lead singer doesn't get jealous that someone's stealing his thunder. I get it, I tell him. He looks at me, and he looks puzzled, and he asks, What, and I ask him if she's got a sister, not that I'm...I mean not that I want...I mean...you know. He just walked away, Kaplan did, and he began playing his saxophone, and the crowd went wild. Wild, I tell you.