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Bringing The Village To Town
Poland’s Warsaw Village Band are now the country’s
best known roots music export. Andrew Cronshaw sets
them in scene, with WVB photos by Judith Burrows.
T
he Warsaw Village Band came ders closed during the struggle for inde-
seemingly from nowhere to pendence. Waking up to find they had no
win the ‘newcomer’ category in immediate prospect of returning home,
the 2004 BBC Radio 3 Awards they played a set of understandably
For World Music, the only Pol- heightened intensity, hunched on the
ish band ever to even be among the nomi- floor under low lights over guitar, recorder
nations. Apart from an occasional festival and something koto-like. Jorgi, whose
gig they hadn’t toured substantially core is the equally (and impressively still)
abroad, and their performance at the hirsute Merlin/ Rasputinesque player of
Awards announcement show at Ronnie rough-hewn flutes Maciej Rychly and his
Scott’s was their first UK appearance. guitarist brother Waldemar, have played
Their second album, People’s Spring, first several times over the years in the UK,
came out on the Polish label Orange including in 1992 for the EBU at Sidmouth
World, but it was its licensed and slightly festival and later in collaboration with the
augmented release in 2002 by German influential Gardzienice Polish avant-garde
label Jaro, under the English version of theatre company. (On one of their trips to
their name (in Polish it’s Kapela Ze Wsi Britain they came with me to witness the
Warszawa) that stirred up foreign interest. rather less avant-garde spectacle of a Lon-
They’re still not quite sure what got
don folk club.)
them the award. “Maybe it was because it
Orkiestra Sw. Mikolaja, the St.
was the time when Poland was joining the
Nicholas Orchestra, based at the Academic
EU,” says fiddler Wojtek Krzak, who usually
Culture Centre Chatka Zaka in Lublin,
acts as the band’s spokesman. “And I think
came together in 1988, at first singing the
it was music from this part of the world
songs of the Lemko and Boyko Ruthenians
presented for the first time in this kind of
who had lived in the eastern Polish
way, with the drums, with cello, with vio-
Carpathians where the Lublin-based group
lins. Maybe during the period when Poland
went hiking, and later broadening their
was coming into the EU the BBC people
interests to the music and folklore of other
had a look on the map and thought of
areas of Poland. In 1990 they initiated the
looking for something from Poland.”
ongoing annual December festival Mikola-
Wojtek joined the band around 2000.
jki Folkowe at Lublin’s Maria Curie-
“We played just Polish festivals, and we
Sklodowska University. “After Kwartet
were known among students and so on
Jorgi and also Trebunie Tutki, maybe St.
but it was nothing special. And suddenly
Nicholas Orchestra because they were very
came Rudolstadt festival, then we record-
important for the young people who were
ed People’s Spring, and that was the
starting to look for folk music,” says
beginning of Warsaw Village Band, as the
Wojtek when I ask him about groups he
name, because of Jaro.”
considers most significant in Polish roots
music. “They were important for Maciej
Kapela Ze Wsi Warszawa had begun
Szajkowski and for me, when we started
in 1997. “It was the time when a lot of
to play. We met them for the first time in
Poles had started to think about their
1996 at the Mikolajki Folkowe festival.”
roots, because after 50 years of commu-
nism they wanted to find something that
Also in the Lublin area, but longer
was really connected with themselves.
established, is the national festival of folk
They were a few young friends who were
bands and singers at Kazimierz Dolny,
maybe more involved in punk but started
which began in 1967. Wojtek describes it:
to work with Polish music.”
“It’s a very nice town, that wasn’t
destroyed by the Germans and so on; it
Leading bands in the Polish back-to-
looks like the renaissance. Each year in
the-roots tendency included Osjan, led by
June there’s a festival of folk culture, and
recorder player Jacek Ostaszewski, formed
it was the place where young people
at the beginning of the 1970s, and
came and were listening to the old peo-
Kwartet Jorgi, who started around 1982.
ple. It happened during the years of com-
The origins of these two groups, which
munism, and it was a sort of provocation
both still exist today, were variously in jazz
– lots of freaks would come to listen to
and hippy eclecticism.
folk music from 80-year-old musicians,
I remember Osjan, bearded and darkly and they had fun. To get to perform at
hirsute, like fugitives from Eisenstein’s Ivan Kazimierz festival you had to pass
The Terrible, sharing a dormitory with my through competitions, and there were
then combo during a Dutch festival on the ethnomusicologists sitting there judging,
snowy winter weekend that Poland’s bor- saying ‘OK, you can perform. But you
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