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Written in Folk Roots issue 124, 1993

VARIOUS ARTISTS
Polke in Valcki - Po Slovensko (Slovenian Way) - Instrumentalne uspesnice (Instrumental hits)
Sraka SCD 08 (1993)

TOMAZ PENGOV
Pripovedi
Sraka SCD 05 (1992)

TOMAZ PENGOV
Rimska Cesta
Sraka SCD 06 (1992)

LJOBA JENCE
Ljudska pesem poje v meni - Slovene folk songs
Sraka SCD 04 (1992)

Since its country's independence from Yugoslavia, the Sraka label has been releasing a steady stream of albums of Slovenian music. Here's the latest batch to arrive.
      Polke in Valcki is a compilation album from Sraka CDs and cassettes of 20 polkas and waltzes, largely led by accordion (button or piano), often with guitar, tuba and sometimes other brass, and in one case Toncek Plut's leaf-playing.
      Singer-songwriter Tomaz Pengov is said to be a very well-regarded singer-songwriter in Slovenia. Pripovedi (Tales) was first released in 1983, and like its 1974 predecessor has now been re-issued, this time on Sraka. There's a new album, too, Rimska Cesta (Milky Way). As always, the world music problem arises; such performers come as a complete item, music and lyrics, and without understanding the language the point can be lost even if written translations are provided. Pengov has a warm voice, in fairly gentle arrangements led by his acoustic guitar. Judging by titles, and the printed English translation of one item from each album, the songs seem to fall into the poetic-lyrical rather than political category. A new recording of songs rendered into English is promised, but I'm not convinced that will help; sometimes it's not just the words but the time and place that give meaning.
      Pengov sings the occasional traditional song. Ljoba Jence' s album, whose title means "Folk Music Sings in Me", deals exclusively with songs from her own and others' collecting in Slovenia, 18 of them, which she sings unaccompanied in a soft, unprojected and straightforward voice. The recording comes in a cardboard box which also contains a 116-page booklet with full English translations of texts, background, sources, philosophy and symbolic drawings. The cassette version, but not the CD, also includes recordings of the natural and human environment. Jence's singing isn't particularly stylish; she very specifically aims to stay close to the sources from which she learned the material, and I suppose it may be that they sang in this intimate, undecorated way. It's not attention-grabbing, stage music, and in another time or place it might be considered academic and unadventurous, but it's the sort of cultural re-affirmation that is sometimes just what's needed. If Sraka are testing to see what goes down well outside Slovenia, I've a feeling that at this stage this is the sort of album, digging into the country's traditions, that will cause most interest. It isn't enough, ultimately, just to sing the old songs without development, but for any country, particularly one newly plunged into the market economy, they give an identity. To quote Ljoba Jence's notes, "We were particularly careless of the folk tradition and consequently of ourselves. We used to speak as if that is peasant, something plain or worthless, and by so reasoning we stopped loving ourselves, the very part of ourselves which makes us different from others."


© 1993 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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