Fox Theater

You can’t know Beats Antique until you’ve been a part of its journey, and experienced the act as an entity with a life of its own. A stage show that demands more music; music that needs costumes, ships and masks and shadow dances; an audience that comes for art, and takes away stories to feed their imagination.

When Beats Antique first drew breath, there was no pressure to become anything. The first album was just Zoe, David, and Tommy’s one-off experimental project for entertainment executive Miles Copeland, when Zoe performed with his Bellydance Superstars. From that creative freedom, a family formed, and in a good family each member wears many hats. Tommy steering percussion, piano, and music production. Zoe producing music, choosing themes and commanding a circus of travelling set designs, creating costuming, and, of course, dancing like nothing you’ve ever seen. David as the multi-instrumentalist, captain of banjo, songwriting, and production. These diverse skills are the muscle of the monster, how the creature moves through them, making itself real.

Some music evolved organically from the decades of experience each collaborator brings to the project. Other pieces were written for the show. In deeply vulnerable interplay, every song is woven into a tapestry of danced and drummed story. Commitment to the full performance art form is how Beats Antique fuses musical worlds, pulling on global sounds for experiments on the fringes of cinematic cabaret, informed by electronic mash-ups and inspirations who have joined them on the journey such as Les Claypool, Bassnectar, Alam Khan, The Glitch Mob, and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band.

Each album and stage show has built upon the last, with highlights such as: emergence from the bellydance and bass underground in the San Francisco Bay; performing to a massive crowd at Red Rocks Amphitheater; Thievery Corporation and their management discovering Beats Antique one fateful night at Burning Man; artist friends painting set pieces, or donning masks for the finale; performing in Egypt on the day some said the world would end; and playing a hometown show at The Fox on the night Occupy Oakland was evicted and merged with their fans to light bonfires in the street and leap over the flames.

Beats Antique is lifted in each step by loyal fans who are included in their definition of chosen family. Whether they’ve been music producers or appreciators, acrobats, illustrators, or students of Zoe’s, the multigenerational, welcoming faces in the crowd are the fire that keeps Beats Antique warm, and ready to explore new depths for the sake of these many muses. They aim for a show anyone can enjoy, a circus that feeds the spirit.

In this place, where they can teach and create and converse with their creation like it’s a dragon come to life full of riddles and blustery demands, Beats Antique is weaving a unique story.

The moons of 2019 will rise on The Grand Bizarre, Beats Antique’s next musical and theatrical endeavor. It’s time to explore what is strange through the large culture collider that is their stage. The world is moving at a frantic pace, and to keep up, there’s nowhere to go but deep inside The Grand Bizarre. Open the door of perception and discover an expansive, rusty, nuclear truth — the only way out is into the strange. The only thing weirder than this world, is what’s happening in your head. What’s the difference, you might wonder? As soon as you join this freakshow, such confusion won’t matter. Find an event near you at BeatsAntique.com

Balkan Bump is the global electronic music project orchestrated by trumpet player, producer and ethnomusicologist Will Magid.

Balkan Bump’s music fuses heavy electronic production with global music influences including traditional Balkan brass melodies, Middle Eastern sounds and American hip hop. The Balkan Bump live show highlights Magid’s expertise as an orchestrator, ranging in size from a solo performer to a 12-piece band featuring a menagerie of global instruments including sitar, saz, oud, clarinet and trumpet. The live performance’s popularity has brought the project to global renown with performances at the world’s biggest music stages including Coachella, Bonnaroo and Lightning In A Bottle, as well as beloved jazz, blues and world music festivals including Harvest Music Festival and CA WorldFest, and numerous appearances at Colorado’s famed Red Rocks Amphitheatre.

Balkan Bump debuted with the single “Aymo” alongside famed Slovenian producer Gramatik and American hip hop royalty Talib Kweli. Gramatik quickly championed the new project, unveiling Balkan Bump’s live show on his Re:Coil Tour and releasing Balkan Bump’s debut EP on his Lowtemp label imprint. Since then the Balkan Bump project has gone on to collaborate with global and live music projects Beats Antique and Moon Hooch; international electronic music superstars CloZee, Fakear, & Manic Focus; and American hip hop icon The Gift Of Gab (Blackalicious). Balkan Bump has been featured in Billboard Magazine, NPR’s The World, The San Francisco Chronicle and Magnetic Magazine. In 2020 Magid curated a series of global music mixes for Los Angeles-based Dublab Radio under the Balkan Bump alias.

As a solo artist, Will Magid has collaborated and performed with artists including Bonobo, Erykah Badu, Pretty Lights, and soul music legend Solomon Burke. He has led numerous jazz and global music outfits including his eponymous soul-funk band’s seminal Alligator Spacewalk album in 2016, and the 2017 neoclassical exploration Lunar Conquest Suite. His music has been featured in campaigns for global brands including Warner Brothers, Uber, Porsche, HP, Vogue, GoPro and Ubisoft. Magid graduated from The UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music with a degree in Ethnomusicology.