Review: Opa Rosa, The Jam Jar – ‘They were extraordinary’

How do you find the words to describe Opa Rosa? How can you capture this feeling with simple syllables?

How can you convey the dip and sway, the swirl and twirl, the pulsing, heart racing, uproarious glory of clarinet and violin, of accordion and rhythm?

How can anyone properly write about the collective, hands-in-the-air dizzy wonder that a set of eleven songs can bring to a room of sweating, heaving bouncing Balkan hedonists?

Billed as part The Big Balkan Takeover of The Jam Jar, Bristol’s incredible Opa Rosa rendered words irrelevant, made meaning from pure joy. They were extraordinary.

On paper they are a five piece playing music from across the Balkan Folk tradition, respectfully representing Bulgaria, Serbia, Moldova and Greece as well as the Klezmer and Roma traditions.

You could describe them purely in terms of the instruments played – violin, accordion, clarinet, double bass, percussion.

You could do that. You’d miss the point in such a wildly spectacular fashion, but you could.

As soon as Isis Wolf-Light raises her clarinet to her lips you know that you’re in the presence of something special, something remarkable.

Ramajana springs to life – there’s no pause, no preamble, just the sound of pure, unadulterated glee. A hefty Balkan throb powered by Izy Ellis’s double bass and some hypnotic tick-tock percussion allows for clarinet, violin and accordion high jinks.

The three of them twist and spin around one another, the clarinet always, always, bursting forwards the other two blazing coloured streamers in its wake. The tune is from Serbia but whatever misguided notion you may have of that country has to be put to one side.

Opa Rosa paint Eastern Europe with a whole new palette of colours.

Opa Tsupa is another Serbian song, another one taken from their debut album, A Feast From the East, and another one to send spirits soaring.

With a snake charmer groove the sounds of the Roma unwind until every head is bobbing, every shoulder rolling. Wolf-light, once again, leading the carnival but Lulu Ruby Rose, on violin, and Thomas Hodson on accordion, sweep everyone along with her.

As much as the tunes from Europe are indescribably wonderful it is, perhaps, in two of their original compositions that you start to see a band as exciting as any around.

The Welly is a certifiable Balkan Banger. Dizzying changes of pace are jazz-like, genius playing never allows the dancefloor any respite, there’s always another fiery crescendo ’round the corner, always another chance to throw your hands in the air with abandon.

And then Wolf-Light pushes her clarinet to the sky and you have to wonder, “Is she the best musician in this city right now?”

Havasi, written by Hodson, gets its live debut tonight. Starting with the slow “zum-zum” of drum and accordion Wolf-Light and Rose carry it to an off kilter, wonky dance, the two of them weaving around one another but never falling, never stumbling.

Urgent smashes on the hand cymbal and a car-chase clarinet finally allowing the whole tune to roam free. Hodson describes this as a “composition” and, somehow, that fits. Havasi is no simple folk tune, it’s jazz, it’s heady classical music made for dancing.

There’s no doubting that Opa Rosa make music for the heart and the feet. It is incredibly uplifting, beautifully freeing. They also make music for the head.

They make you want to seek out music from other countries, other traditions. They make you fall in love with cultures that, almost certainly, most of us know little about.

It’s hard to put into words what we might be missing if war and ignorance further remove us from Eastern Europe but Opa Rosa will help us remember, help us celebrate.

Belmont has an ache of homeland, the tiniest pull of melancholy underneath the frenzy. It’s the lump-in-the-throat on the happiest of days.

Ben from Raka (an eight-piece London based, Balkan band that play later; they are also brilliant) adds a second violin and, somehow, his lightning fast playing keeps up with Wolf-Light’s vertiginous clarinet.

She traces fierce racing-car lines whilst the two violins play keepy-uppies, the accordion and the rhythm section clearing the path for music that dips, sways, swirls and twirls.

Music that is pulsing, heart-racing and, quite simply, glorious.

Opa Rosa leave me speechless.

Main photo: Gavin McNamara

Read next:

• Review: Cinder Well, Cafe Kino – ‘The most astonishing, visceral live performance’
• The Schmoozenbergs, The Wardrobe Theatre – ‘The good times never stop’
• Review: Half Man, Half Biscuit, SWX – ‘Filled with sweat, punk rock and a sense of community’

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