Mucca Pazza

Mucca Pazza is the marching band that thinks it’s a rock ‘n roll band. The group is a collection of shameless band nerds wielding instruments of incongruous traditions, sometimes in competition, often in cooperation. Many of them played in traditional marching bands in high school. Others wanted to but couldn’t because they played violin or accordion, and no one had yet come up with the amplified helmet. With speakers strapped firmly to heads, their rambunctious live show has brought them to such acclaimed venues as the Late Show with Conan O’Brien, Lollapalooza, and a fleet of canoes floating down the Chicago River.

Their music skips from genre to unnameable genre, never settling in one place for long, but held together by the band’s unmistakable sound and irresistible energy. To their credit, they only have one march in their original repertoire, their other music includes zombie-mambo, snake-charmer-metal, gypsy-reggaeton, punk-classical, and some demented arrangements of Dmitri Shostakovich, Bela Bartok, and famed Egyptian composer Kemal El Tawil.

They play everywhere: from punk venues to orchestral halls, from public parks to public radio, from diva palaces to dive bars. Some have called them “circus punk,” some say they’re “geek love,” but no one calls them dull.