Immigrant punk, Gypsy, punk, tango, raggae, mariachi, polka all come together in a new wave of music loved by New York art freaks and middle aged housewives - a cultural revolution for the new century featuring bands like Gogol Bordello, Kultur Shock, the Hungry Marching Band and others.

I love music. I love Bix Beiderbecke, Rosemary Cloony, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Eva Cassidy and the Jefferson Airplane, and Frank Sinatra and plenty others who don’t usually show up in the same sentence. But, as a normal person of many moods, emotions and desires I find that there’s always somebody out there who creates a sound perfectly in tune with the new moment.

Unless I can’t. Unless I hit one of those times in life when I want something I don’t know what it is, a sound current to the day, to the latest thrill or heartbreak. And it’s out there, just out of reach, if I only know where to look. Like in the 1970’s when rock’n’roll went to hell and I discovered jazz and folk.

Times are crazy, no? Authority lacks its ability to inspire confidence. Anger simmers at the periphery yet there is a perverse joy in losing faith. You have to cast around and be creative and when you find it, when it sneaks up and blasts you 10:30 one night in your very own kitchen, the bright yellow CD slapped on the table.

“I think you’ll like this,” he said.

Immigrant punk. Is that what they call it? The perfect fusion of old and new, this new sound whose racket hammers out a rhythmic bliss, if bliss dances around on top of tables. It sounded familiar like every song you ever fell in love with from the moment you heard the first four notes. I’ve been waiting for it all my life.

This is a new wave post punk sound. More melodic than the original punk with its British lower class right-wing sneer and bigoted skin-head overtones. A passionate humor and a cocky sweetness winks behind a back to basics anti-authoritarian melange of international sound. It’s a circus of Gypsy music, tango, polka, dub, rock’n’roll, flamenco, hora, raggae, Afro-Eastern European with a back beat of working class intellectual left-wing heart.

May I introduce you to the sound that may save your soul.

Gogol Bordello. In 1986, young Eugene Hutz evacuated with his family from the nuclear terror at Chernobyl, Ukraine and visited the village of his parental origins. There, he met his Gypsy roots, an up to then, unknown background. Just what the doctor ordered. Trekking across Europe for seven years in true Gypsy fashion, Hutz soaked up refugee music played on jun, home made instruments and Bohemian artistic sensibility.

In the late 1990’s, Hutz met New York City. Along with Sergey Ryabtzev on violin, Yuri Lemeshev on accordion, Oren Kaplan on guitar, Rea Mochiach, Eliot Ferguson and Elizabeth Sun, Hutz and Gogol Bordello make some foot-stomping, dancing on the tables, stand up in the middle of everything and scream Gypsy, immigrant punk. That is, according to Hutz, sensual, mystical, cultural and obscene. His powerful voice pumps that perfect mixture of rage and joy as he sings in English and other languages.

Gogol Bordello’s wild, costumed performances have added pizzazz to the New York Gypsy Festival s well as the Whitney Museum’s Biennial celebration in 2002.

In addition to his musical gifts, Hutz’s acting talents have graced several movies including Everything is Illuminated in which Elijah Wood plays a spookily nerdish American obsessive-compulsive in search of his Eastern European roots. Guided by a warm-hearted, unpredictable maniac named Alex (Hutz), we follow Wood’s quest into the tragic, comic, and beautiful mysteries of his family’s pre-immigrant past.

I’ve played Gogol Bordello’s Underdog World Strike for people and they all either love it or hate it. Those who love it sit up, eyes gleaming, mouth open in the joyous recognition of hearing the crazed, old-fashioned, new wave, Balkanized foot stomping punk racket. One who did not enjoy Gogol Bordello claimed that it made his eyeballs hurt.

Hungry March Band is a Brooklyn based blend of traditional marching band, New Orleans street band, European brass, Indian wedding music with a dash of hip-hop and punk. When the glorious tribe in their eclectic costumes comes down the boardwalk for Coney Island’s Mermaid Parade, you are in for a riotous blast of music.

Manu Chao. Jose Manuel Thomas Arthur Chao the French born political activist of Spanish descent sings in English, Spanish, French Portuguese and Arabic. His songs about life in the ghetto, love and left-leaning immigrant sentiments are influenced by the antiglobalization movement, ska, alternative rock, Latin, punk and hip-hop.

Kultur Shock is a Gypsy punk rock metal band whose 6 members are compromised by an international mix of people and sounds.

Asian Dub Foundation features searing sitar inspired guitar, hard raggae and traditional rock’n’roll. The London based band includes Deeder Zamon (a Bengali rapper), Anrrudda Daas, and John Pandit who came together at a summer music workshop in London.