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s the festival progressed the daytimes were filled with teaching of mazurka playing and dancing, conferences and an ‘Old Tradition’ competition for traditional ensembles. On the Satur- day there was an outdoor display in the heart of the city by makers and repairers of folk instruments including fiddles, cim- baly (Polish hammered dulcimer), hurdy- gurdies, the range of Polish bagpipes, bar- rel organ, the recently revived Plock fiddle and its kindred suka, and a form of accordeon unique to Poland called a har- monia, which at first glance is a finely- wrought piano-accordeon but in fact is radically different in layout, with three rows of piano-like keys on the melody side, and it also comes in a version mount- ed on a steel tube up which air is pumped from foot-operated bellows.
A The evenings brought concerts and
dancing. On Tuesday a fun social dance and play session in a bookshop café, on Wednesday and Thursday events at the Mazovian Cultural Centre mixing tradi- tional performers with mazurka-inspired others, including an impeccable, sonically fascinating set from the new-music quar- tet Kwadrofonik, who use a stageful of timpani, marimbas and other percussion and two grand pianos in minutely co- ordinated works. Friday’s formal concert in Polish Radio’s concert hall focused on the music of Kurpie in north-east Mazovia and featured four feisty lady traditional singers, the male vocal group Monodia including Prusinowski Trio members and fronted by the very fine singer Adam Strug, and the Polish Radio Choir con- tributing tradition-inspired compositions by early 20th Century Polish composer-col- lector Karol Szymanowski and the late, greater Henryk Górecki.
At the festival club, in the nightclub
below the bar-restaurant in Skwer Herber- ta Hoovera in Warsaw’s wide, elegant cen- tral avenue, an ever-growing throng
danced into the early hours to a mix of elderly village musicians and urban bands. Particularly notable among the latter were bassist Marcin Pospieszalski’s jazz- rock combo, fronted by electric fiddler Mateusz Smoczynsky (which reminded me of a sort of mazurka-tinged Second Vision), the always excellent Prusinowski Trio, Kapela Bródow, a group of bag- pipers, and two very impressive young girls barely into their teens, one a singer, the other a fiddler. It was the village musi- cians, though, who made it all fit togeth- er, with their richly characterful, weath- ered faces, a sharp light in their eyes and the life- possessed driving of their fiddles, harmonia, cimbaly and tambourines. The energy reached an all-consuming peak with the extraordinarily intense, risk-tak- ing playing of the three Tarnowski broth- ers. They were once a well-known trio in demand for village weddings and other celebrations, not just as musicians but also popular exponents of ‘wedding theatre’, traditional performance-art strangeness on the second day of a wedding. A few years ago they were encouraged out of retire- ment by Andrzej Bienkowski, a painter and professor of fine arts who has been central to the rediscovery of Mazovia’s traditional music with his filming and recording. In the notes to the Muzyka Odnaleziona (Music Rediscovered) series of CD-books, he writes:
“Poland, 1980, and communism is fac- ing collapse. Petrol is being rationed, the shops are empty. I begin my journey through the countryside to record music. It’s strange, because there are a great many folk bands, but their services are no longer required in the villages or towns. Musicians stop playing and sell off their instruments; slowly but surely they are forgotten. The first difficulty we faced was finding them replacement instruments. I met musicians who hadn’t seen each other in years, hav- ing once played weddings together regu- larly; this was the last generation of village
The Janusz Prusinowski Trio play for dancing outside the church
musicians. Then came the dawn of the pop era. We filmed and made unique music recordings in the musicians’ homes, which were natural, stress-free environments. We searched throughout Poland, Ukraine and Belarus and found 1500 musicians, as well as singers, and from this number we recon- structed eighty bands.”
Janusz Prusinowski tells me it was see- ing one of Bienkowski’s films that was his Damascene moment. “We’d met as a group of musical friends. What he showed us was a revelation – for me it was like an experience that all is one, a unity of what I was looking for in rock’n’roll – freedom of improvisation – on one hand, and on the other what I have from my home, what keeps me together with my family, the people I love. And that was mazurkas; improvised, free, very sophisticated in a rhythmical sense, and used for the dance, and expression of body. And body and soul seems to create a union. So first I was reminded of what I played in childhood, and started to learn new melodies. And we travelled to villages, we made friends with musicians. And we felt like contin- uers: I understand, I learn it, I can continue it. I wanted to have exactly this sound of violin, this sort of rhythmical pattern, this musical language.”
Janusz was born in a village, and his parents liked to dance and sing. “Oberek, mazurek, kujawiak, that was just normal in our house. So when I began playing instruments, an accordeon, at first I played melodies my parents sang. I learned by myself. My neighbour played a harmonia pedalova, so I learned some tunes from him. Later I got fascinated with blues, rock’n’roll, popular music. I learned guitar, and what was exciting in that playing for me was improvisation, creating new music. It was so easy – two chords, two riffs, and you get a new song, and each time it seems to be new, to be yours. So it was a way of expression. It was a time in life – 16, 17, 18 – when you need to express your-
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