Stary Olsa - Kelih Kola (Loving Cup) (2001)

«Stary Olsa is a band of mediaeval Belarusan music. It was founded in 1999 by its present leader Zmicier Sasnouski and now consists of 5 musicians. It takes its name from a brook in the west part of Mahilou Region (Belarus). The band’s repertoire includes Belarusan folk balladry and martial songs, Belarusan national dances, works of Belarusan Renaissance composers, compositions from Belarusan aulic music collections (e.g. Polacak Notebook, Vilnian Notebook), Belarusan canticles of the 16th – early 17th centuries, as well as European popular melodies of the Middle Ages and Renascence. Stary Olsa cooperates with many knightly clubs from Belarus and Europe, museums and research centres, masters of early instruments, bands of folk, aulic, sacred and city avital music, as well as with solo performers using old instruments.

The band’s music makes it possible to restore sounding of many forgotten instruments. Stary Olsa uses for its performances maximally exact (in appearance, technology and materials) copies of the age-old Belarusan instruments such as duda (bagpipe), lira (lyre), husli (psaltery), svirel (pipe), drymba (jew’s-harp), akaryna (ocarina), surma (trumpet), bierascianaja truba (birch bark trumpet), hudok (rebec) and baraban drums). The purpose is to reconstruct completely (whenever possible) the musical traditions of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania where Belarus was the basic cultural and geopolitic part in the 13th-18th centuries, and where there was a unique synthesis of Belarusan folk and aulic music with the European musical achievements of that time. In order to revive this cultural feature the band’s members mix early Belarusan instruments’ sounding with the all-European mediaeval instruments such as lutnia (lute), flejta (flute), mandalina (mandolin), arabski baraban (Arabian drum).» (Stary Olsa)

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