What happens when music is created inside of one reality—and released to people facing another?
Israeli funk trio Balkan Beat Box is experiencing that question in real time. The band’s sixth album, Wild Wonder, was recorded between 2021-2023, and set for release in the fall of last year. It was the most ambitious album Balkan Beat Box had ever created, weaving together their tried-and-true party music, expansive jazz takes and dreamy, spoken word segments. Singer-rapper Tomer Yosef laid down awe-inspired lines about the magic of human life and how each one of us is god.
But after war broke out in October 2023, the album was shelved—only to be quietly released this past June into a vastly different world than the one in which it was created.
“People have been asking us: ‘How did you make an album so fitting for this moment, right before these worlds collided?’ The answer is that we’re asking universal questions that are relevant all the time,” says Balkan Beat Box multi-instrumentalist Ori Kaplan. “But they are especially relevant in times of urgency.”
As longstanding musicians espousing human rights for all in the region—sometimes from the stage during their electrifying performances—they believe Wild Wonder fits the moment, even if they made it before that moment actually arrived.
After all, Yosef, Kaplan and drummer Tamir Muskat aren’t strangers to navigating change together. For the band, this record is the result of 20 years as musical brothers—changing, growing and evolving.
Balkan Beat Box was founded by Kaplan and Muskat, two Israelis who met in New York City, playing in Romani influenced punk bands like Gogol Bordello and Firewater. The addition of Tomer Yosef, with his ratatat rapping and elastic energy, sealed the trio. The band’s sound fused Balkan folk with electronica, funk, punk and hip-hop—all adornments around Kaplan’s rave-up saxophone riffs. The mix clicked; their 2005 debut and 2007’s Nu Med locked them into international tours, movie placements and countless house party playlists.
One of Kaplan’s sax riffs was even sampled by pop star Jason Derulo—his 2013 track “Talk Dirty” was a mega-hit, with nearly 750-million streams on Spotify, cementing the band’s influence.
“I made a career off those saxophone lines,” Kaplan says with a laugh. “That was our sound: ‘Everybody, arms up! The hook is coming!’”
After 2016’s pulsing Shout It Out, Balkan Beat Box took a breather. Life came knocking; Kaplan and Muskat went through divorces. Yosef transported his family away from city life in favor of Tze’elim, a quiet desert kibbutz. All three of them worked on side and solo projects.
When they began talking about a new album, a few things crystalized. They decided to write and record in the desert, far from the frenetic Tel Aviv studios they’d previously used. And those sax riffs? Well, Kaplan says, “Sometimes you just don’t need a big horn line. We wanted something more internalized, more meditative. We were leaning inward.”
The trio camped out in Yosef’s kibbutz for a few days at a time, every few weeks, for two years.
“You smell that fresh desert air if the wind goes one way and cow shit if the wind goes another,” jokes Yosef of Tze’elim.
Kaplan says the band was “more in tune with the sound of the leaves and the trees.”
He explains, “There are very few cars on the kibbutz. So when you see a chicken or duck walking down the sidewalk, it slows you down. You can feel the murmur of your own heart.”
Balkan Beat Box worked as they always had—improvising grooves until they landed on something hot, then digging in. But the new setting inspired new sounds, too. Kaplan felt more drawn to his flute than his saxophone, and the band relished in longer, jazz influenced instrumentals. Yosef found himself writing especially philosophically, celebrating the oneness of all things—and the absurdity of believing anything else.
“No flags, no tags/ I belong with everything/ I don’t believe in anything/ All I got is this life to live,” he sings on “Break the Law.” On the title track, he’s “feeling lucky to be alive in a wild wonder.” And on “Every One of Us Is God,” Yosef is pensive, chanting, “Greedy minds are fueled with blood/ With gold and diamonds/ Top medallions of fear and violence,” before he resolves, “Every one of us is god/ Every one of us is mud.”
Kaplan and Muskat got more experimental to match Yosef’s lyrics, leading to an album that’s by far Balkan Beat Box’s most dynamic. The band felt they had something special—looser, deeper grooves and a smoothed out, psyched-up Balkan Beat Box.
“Like all our music, once we have the beat, the horn and the vocal, we start to dress things around them,” Yosef says. “But this is a suit we’ve never worn before. It’s our exact measurements for right now.”
They finished Wild Wonder and prepared to let it fly. And then came Hamas’ attacks on Israel, including communities neighboring Tze’elim, and Israel’s ongoing, brutal war in Gaza. Reality shifted drastically. The band sat on their creation for over eight months, but they eventually released the album this summer. The three musicians knew that the world had changed, but they believed their music’s resonance hadn’t.
The band further offers, in a collective statement: “Our stance on human rights have not changed. We see ourselves first as humans with sensitivity to all innocent lives. No country would be able to live with [Hamas] at the border, but the reason it came to this is also because of the Israeli government.”
Whether they are making music or talking politics, Balkan Beat Box’s belief is the same. As Kaplan says, “Whenever you deal with truth, it’ll always resonate.”
