Armenia

Bambir Midnight Bash, The Club, Yerevan, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Hetq Online 2006

It was meant to start at 23.43, but this being Armenia where timekeeping is lacking to say the least, the premiere of Gyumri rock band Bambir’s new programme of music at Yerevan’s The Club started at well past midnight. Not that it mattered, perhaps. It was late, and the concert was always going to run into the early hours anyway. No wonder the band performed in their pyjamas — typical of these guys from Armenia’s second largest city, as I recently wrote for Hetq Online.

The band’s charismatic madcap antics always prove a huge success with a young, progressive audience.

“Gyumri is a city of humor,” says Barseghyan, “and our outlook is shaped by that. We’re clowns, and I’ve always wanted to make people laugh because for me, that’s a great art. In Armenia, we need that now, and especially among youth. We need to see more people smiling.”

And the new material and programme is good. Very good, in fact, although some of it had been included in their previous set that seemed to keep Yerevan alive and rocking during most of last autumn and winter. Billed as The Diary, Narek Barseghyan said it was a conceptialized programme of mainly new music that Bambir have been rehearsing for the past few months.

Regardless, the albeit small audience appeared to like the new show, and it has to be said that despite its smaller size, The Club was a nicer venue for the band to perform in than Yerevan’s Stop Club. Sound was significantly better and the illumination, mostly by candlelight, was a huge improvement on the lighting that has made concert photography somewhat of a chore in other venues.

Also interesting to note the makeup of the audience. In addition to a mainly twenty-something local crowd, there were two Diasporans from Gerard Cafesjian’s CS Media, Aram Hajian, Sam from Square One, and Arsineh Khachikian who has just arrived in Armenia from the U.S. and blogs over at Cilicia.com’s Life in Armenia page.

Anyway, if you’re in town during the summer and you get the chance to catch Bambir performing, don’t miss it. Thankfully, after a long and depressing winter, Yerevan just came alive again.

Bambir Midnight Bash, The Club, Yerevan, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Hetq Online 2006

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 14th, 2006 at 1:24 am and is filed under Entertainment, Diaspora, Rock, Photography, Caucasus, Youth, Music, Culture, Armenia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.