Barbes, the bar and performance space located on 9th Street near 6th Avenue, won my heart on Tuesday night.

Two friends and I stopped by for a drink after voting on Tuesday. While I have been abundantly aware of their nightly schedule of world music and jazz, I had never actually set foot in the place.

Well, Tuesday changed all that. The Slavic Soul Party was on hand to offer a rollicking good time that suffused the small, dark bar with old world atmosphere and mind-bending energy. 

The place is like something out of your dreams of Europe, the Left Bank, a wonderful night in a make-believe place. You are drinking beer – tall glasses of Stella Artois or Cognac,  and talking to dear friends when…

…a band of musicians comes through the room and everyone is transported to an old world village somewhere – Russia, Bulagaria, Romania. It is  the happiest music you’ve ever heard. And yet it is melancholy, too. The sound of a place and time that no longer exists except in this dreamlike world. How can something so happy be so sad? The band evokes that perfect mix of sounds that makes your heart swell and your eyes tear. It makes you laugh as much as it makes you want to dance in a circle with everyone in the room.

One Tuesday night you must give Barbes a try because the SLAVIC SOUL PARTY, a Balkan Party is there every Tuesday. For ever!

According to the blurb on the Barbes calendar: "Matt Moran leads one of the best Balkan Brass Bands anywhere. Experience a take on Balkan Music which is as brash and as strong as Slivovitz (the Serbian Plum Brandy) – equal parts fire, funk, free-form and old school-exuberance. SSP will make you feel like you’re attending wedding orchestrated by Emir Kusturica .With Shane Endsley & Ben Holmes (trumpet), Oscar Noriega (clarinet), Jacob Garchik and Brian Drye (trombone), Ron Caswell (tuba), Peter Stan (accordion), Take Toriyama & Matt Moran () $8 suggested."

I found out that the bar is named for a neighborhood in northern Paris famous for its large North African population as well as the record stores
which helped launch the Rai music explosion of the mid-1980’s.

Owned and operated by two French musicians and long-time Brooklyn
residents, Barb