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)

Link in comments

Ethno Trio Troitsa - Zhuravy (2001)

Troitsa appeared in 1996 in Belarus, a small Eastern European country situated between Poland and Russia and also sharing borders with Ukraine and Lithuania. The founder of the group and its creative "guiding spirit" was Ivan Ivanovich Kirtchuk, a senior lecturer of the university in Minsk, the Belorussian capital. The name of the band, "Troitsa", which in translation means the numeral three, or the religious term "Trinity", was meant to underline the connection with national traditions. The idea to form such a group came to Ivan's mind in 1986, when he was collecting ethnographic material in Belorussian villages. His main motive for taking this step was the desire to popularize national songs, to connect them with musical traditions of the world. In fact, Belorussian music is quite universal, as it was shaped by various cultural influences mixing up in the country's history. The group is known mainly outside their native land.

In 1997 the band became popular in Russia, and in 1998 they made a big tour across the Netherlands, Slovenia, Croatia, Germany and Portugal. The uniqueness of their compositions, the variety of instruments they play, and also their professionalism – Ivan's strong voice and the technical abilities of other musicians – gave them great success with the audience, especially in Holland. "Troitsa" from the beginning used not only national instruments, but also those from other countries of the world, all the same retaining old Belorussian as the language of their songs. Critics described their style as "folk-fusion with the influence of world-music".

In 1998 the group was noticed by a Dutch recording company Pan Records, which offered them a contract for the release of their debut album "Troitsa". After this release and some concerts in Belarus and Holland the group broke up for some time. […] In 2000 Ivan released a solo record, "Heritage Of The Lost Villages". […] which In the autumn of the same year a new line-up, called "Ethno Trio Troitsa", gave their first concert in Minsk. New members of the band were Jury Dmitriev, a guitarist and a pupil of Ivan Kirtchuk, and drummer Jury Pavlovskij, ex-musician of "Kniaz Myshkin". Zhuravy, the first release of the new formation, appeared in Holland in 2001. (gadki.lublin.pl)

Link in comments (thanx again to Valery from Moscow for this post)

If you like Troitsa, look for their Sem album in L'Arbre de les 1000 musiques.