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can’t, because your hat is not from the vil- in Warsaw built around a competition for
lage you come from.’ For the last 20 or so folk bands. (Among other inspirations, Bal-
years it’s been rather like theatre, but it iszewska had noticed via her EBU involve-
was a very popular festival in Poland.” ment the positive effect of BBC Radio 2’s
In 1997 a youthful group, Kapela Ze
earlier Young Tradition Award in bringing
Wsi (The Band From The Village), was play-
out young folk and traditional musicians.)
ing at weekends in the streets of the
The first of these was in 1998, and Kapela
reconstructed old town of their native
Ze Wsi went in for it, coming joint second.
Warsaw. Unusually among the young There’s a number from their set on Nowa
groups getting into Polish roots, they Tradycja: Antologia Polskiego Folku, Pol-
focused on the music of Mazovia skie Radio’s 2007 double live CD of compe-
(Mazowsze in Polish), the east-central low- tition entrants from the first ten years
land region that includes their home city. which features early appearances by some
Even within Mazovia there are local
other now well-known bands and makes a
variations, but the common village band
useful window on the Polish roots scene.
line-up during the 20th century involved One of the jury was broadcaster
fiddle, baraban (bass drum) usually with Wlodzimierz (Wlodek) Kleszcz, who for
some metallic percussion such as triangle the last 15 or so years has hosted an eclec-
or cymbal, or a large tambourine, with a tic world music show on Polish Radio. He
rhythmic, grunting bowed bass line pro- was the mastermind of the project that in
vided by a cello-sized two- or three-
the early 1990s put together on his modest
stringed basy (bass), and sometimes
Kamahuk label the unlikely musical collab-
accordeon. Such bands, or members of
oration by leading Tatra Mountains tradi-
them, also accompanied folk singers with
tional fiddling family Trebunie Tutki with
strong, but natural and unforced, voices.
Jamaican reggae musician Norman Grant
and his band the Twinkle Brothers; the
T
he roots of the characteristic
WVB sound can perhaps be project achieved national fame in Poland
Osjan’s Jacek Ostaszewski
heard as clearly as anywhere in with its debut Higher Heights – Twinkle
the playing of the band from Inna Polish Stylee and has gone on to a
the village of Raducz near string of other recordings including mixing band’s name, to make it
Skierniewice in Mazovia, led by the wild by UK dub master Adrian Sherwood. Kapela Ze Wsi Warszawa
virtuoso fiddling of Stanislaw Klejnas
“Wlodek decided to produce Kapela Ze
(The Band From The Village
(1905-1988) with droning accompaniment
Wsi’s album; he changed some things in the
“I
decided to add a word to the
Warsaw). It was a provoca-
on 3-string basy and a drum with jingles.
music and so on. It was the beginning of
tion, because people from Warsaw, I
There are four tracks from them on
this journey with him. He was so interested
mean the children of TV and supermarket
Mazowsze, the 1996 first release in Polish
in this kind of music because, as he tells it,
culture, don’t know about the roots of
Radio’s 20-plus archive CD series Sources
it’s like the animals, naïve but powerful and
the great art of Chopin, even if he has
Of Polish Folk Music. To quote the notes:
strong,” says Wojtek. “At that time there
given his first name, Fryderyk, to the
“The Klejnas Band’s popularity spanned
weren’t really many Polish bands doing
national showbiz prizes. Anyway if they
over fifty years and was so widespread
Mazovia music, it was a new language.”
were going to perform outside Warsaw
that farmers in localities forty or more and abroad it was a good advert.”
kilometres from Raducz made a point of
I asked Wlodek himself to enlarge on
ensuring the ensemble’s performance at
the story: “The founder was a great enthu-
That first 1998 album, Hopsasa, was
local weddings. Towards the end of his
siast, a punky guy, Maciej Szajkowski, with
released on Kleszcz’s Kamahuk label (re-
life Stanislaw Klejnas was keen to play
a few nice girls. It was an incredible raw
released in 2005 by Jaro), and it won the
with young musicians, including
Mazovian vibe, like in the film Chopin’s
Polish Radio 3 award for folk album of the
teenagers, with a view to passing on
Youth [Mlodosc Chopina, made in 1952]. So
year. It’s a refreshing, energetic piece of
work, in which the kind of overlapping
Mazovia’s folk traditions to them. He
I made them a proposition to create a new
reverbs and delays to be heard in the
recorded for Polish Radio until the end of
Polish world music style from Mazovia and
Trubunie/ Twinkle collaboration are
his life, leaving a vast legacy of several
to record an album. It was three months’
applied to the Kapela’s fiddles (which
hundred recordings – solo violin, with the
hard rehearsals at Maciej Szajkowski’s flat
included a reconstructed old fingernail-
band and accompanying women singers
on the fifth floor of a ten-storey building in
stopped knee-fiddle, the suka) with
from Krosnowa and Byczki.” (There’s
the heart of the city. It was crazy, hours of
female vocals, chugging bowed basy and
some film footage of Klejnas, shot in 1986
roots Mazovian vibes in the middle of War-
the bang of baraban and frame drums and
by artist Andrzej Bienkowski, on YouTube
saw. People walking on the street below
clash of a small cymbal. While it estab-
at
http://tinyurl.com/ofsubm)
couldn’t believe what they were hearing!”
lished the subsequent trademark WVB fid-
Polish Radio’s Maria Baliszewska, tradi-
“We recorded all the songs in six
dles and drums sound, that’s just a part of
tional and folk music co-ordinator for the hours in the radio studio, and then there it, the drums have a non-dominant, time-
EBU (European Broadcasting Union) who was another six hours of mixing by Wojtek keeping role as in the village bands and it’s
leads the Folk Culture Radio Centre she Przybylski, the first radio dub master, the a varied, well played, well-recorded album
established in 1994 and is responsible for creator of the sounds of our Polish world of traditional songs that still sounds good.
the Sources Of Folk Music CD series, initiat- music series from Kamahuk and for well The main singer was Katarzyna Szurman,
ed Polish Radio’s Nowa Tradycja (New Tra- known rock bands like Republika, Perfect, whose voice had the same sort of unforced
dition) festival, an annual series of concerts Kazik and so on.” natural edge as the old village singers,
Orkiestra Sw. Mikolaja Trebunie Tutki with the Twinkle Brothers.
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