The Ensemble of the International School of Traditional Music (Poland)
Singers:
Anastazja Bernad
Zofia Bernad
Barbara Ciemięga
Paulina Dziuba
Ewa Grochowska
Olga Kozieł
Hanna Linkowska
Justyna Piernik
Kapela Kujawska:
Krzysztof Butryn
Ewa Grochowska
Magdalena Jakubowska
Edyta Piekarczyk
Natalia Reichert
The Music of Kuyavia concert is yet another cultural venture organised as part of the International School of Traditional Music. This time around, however, the emphasis is on female singers (among others the participants of the workshop conducted during the International Summer School of Traditional Music, as organised by the Muzyka Kresów Foundation) and instrumentalists, invited specifically to partake in this musical undertaking, which endeavours to reconstruct the traditional/folk music of Kuyavia on the basis of the audio archives of the Institute of Arts of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw (IS PAN).
The Music of Kuyavia, which due to its inherent stylistic features is construed by musicologists as the paradigm of Polishness (this critical observation pertains in particular to instrumental music), is a phenomenon that defies simple and straightforward categorisation. Although its historical development is well documented ethnographically, its present-day incarnation, as typified by the stylistic unification of singing, depletion of archaic repertoire and related archetypal performative practices, is devoid of region-specific idiosyncrasies which would otherwise provide modern listeners with a glimpse of the Kuyavian music’s originality and beauty. Therefore, our work with these archival records which contain earlier, more extended and varied forms of songs and dance melodies typical of the Kuyavia region stems from this desire to get familiarised with the roots of the traditional music.
The idea behind the Kuyavian workshops originated from experience gathered collectively during research into the traditional music of Masovia and northern Lesser Poland. The music of these regions, dominated by three-beat rhythms and strong instrumental traditions, serves as a veritable school of performing arts, especially with relation to folk singing whose stylings are characterised by tempo rubato derived from dance music as well as chant-like technique of lyrical – or even ritualistic e.g. wedding songs – vocalisation. Such type of singing is replete with mannerisms and unusual intervals, all of which are the outcome of the accommodation of the singing style to the heavily variable way of playing/orchestrating the melodies of the mazurka.
All of the above phenomena are also present in the music of Kuyavia. As they are predominantly audible in post-war archival records, their analysis provides researchers with a fuller picture of the present-day music of the region, the archaic musical features of which, such as the modal scale, are increasingly reduced to simpler d minor forms. Moreover, instrumental traditions, especially solemn, sophisticated kuyaviaks in a minor key allow for performative and interprative variations, also with regard to larger folk ensembles than the typical – not only of the Kuyavia region – duo of the fiddle and the bass.
Concept and concert organisation: Ewa Grochowska
Mari Boine (Norway)