Warsaw Village Band

"WARSAW VILLAGE BAND blows a wind of change into the Polish folk scene For Western Europeans, Poland remains an unknown neighbour, even if the country already has one foot in the door of the European Union. And despite the fact that the Polish folk scene is presently bursting with vitality. The Warsaw Village Band is one of the most outstanding groups to come out of Poland in the past few years. Folk music is undergoing a kind of renaissance in Poland, and has become extremely fashionable. Old persons who still play the traditional Polish instruments were a major inspiration for the musicians of the WARSAW VILLAGE BAND. It was with the help of those people that most of the band members learned to play the old instruments auto-didactically. 'We travelled from village to village, seeking out the old people; we listened to their music and their stories. What surprised us most was that no one else in the villages is interested in this music anymore. These are old people, and when they die, the music will die with them.' It is entirely thanks to these old people that the band musicians know how to play the instruments in the traditional way. The most interesting instrument in the collection of the WARSAW VILLAGE BAND is certain to be the Suka, played by Sylwia: an old Polish form of the violin, originating in the sixteenth century, with strings that are played with the fingernails. The other two women in the band play the zither and the cello, two of the men play drums, and one of them the violin and hurdy-gurdy. The women sing with powerful voices, song that is sometimes rather shrill but always forceful and impressive. 'The vocal style is based on the so-called white voice, a special traditional technique originating with the shepherds, who always shouted at the top of their voices. This is combined with the traditional techniques for playing the old Polish instruments.'"