Kapela Ze Wsi Warszawa / Warsaw Village Band - Wiosna Ludu / People’s Spring (2001)

Thanx to Celta Gnome, I can post you today this very interesting young band from Warsaw, Poland. Kapela Ze Wsi Warszawa (Warsaw Village Band)’s 2001 Wiosna Ludu (People’s Spring) is a very nice mix of tradition and modernity. Read the following review to learn more about this really promising band:

«The Warsaw Village Band, one of Poland’s outstanding new bands, was founded in 1997 by six young musicians wishing to preserve traditional Polish music without producing ‘plastic folk’ for a mass culture. Performing in a style described as “hardcore folk” or “bio techno”, they treasure the memories of their ethnic roots, and keeping them alive, they connect tradition to new modern aesthetics. They want to offer a new cultural proposition young people, far from narrow-mindedness and mass culture. While travelling the Polish countryside, they learnt traditional music that had been nearly forgotten.

Inspired by this music, they play folk dances, ballads, and rural traditionals, but it is very important for them not to simply adapt the old music, but to create their very own style. They use traditional instruments handed down through the generations, such as the ‘white voice’, a special singing style, close to screaming, used by the shepherds of old. They also discovered the ‘suka’, an ancient Polish fiddle, played by fingernails. They create rhythm with two drummers each playing a single drum, which is a rather unusual combination for any kind of folk music.

The Warsaw Village Band wanted to have fun making music in a spontaneous way, and when they first started performing, they just beat their drums in any traditional rhythm occurring to them until they met on common ground, creating a wholly unique and fascinating sound. You can hear stringed instruments sounding like French horns, furious drums, trance, improvisation, and elements of roots music. Above all, you can hear the enthusiasm and passion of six young musicians aged between 16 and 25 years.

Their music brings back long forgotten traditional musical elements of trance, connecting ancient religious culture from all over the world, such as Sufi, Dervish, and Chassidim.To the Warsaw Village Band, music is the soul’s best drug, an inspiration and trance meditation; it is the rhythm and it is fun – let’s dance!» (Adastra-music)

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