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Written in fRoots issue 232, 2002

SUI VESAN
Sui
Millenium 834013-0 (2001)

The opening couple of tracks of this one seem to be have attracted substantial interest among listeners to Charlie Gillett’s radio shows.
      Sui Vesan is a Slovakian singer of acrobatic, declamatory vocal technique and a variety of thrumming, percussive guitar styles to which here she adds touches of clicking, slapping or thumping percussion. It’s a totally solo album except for a spot of sarangi and sampled accordion on a couple of tracks by Ivan Minárik.
      She croons, howls, jumps registers, whispers, lets rip at the top of her voice. It’s bold, wild stuff, far from the western European or American sound of a singer-guitarist. While not particularly close in sound or shape to Slovakian traditional music either it nevertheless reflects its place of origin, drawing on the tradition of spirited musical inventiveness and rooted avant-gardism that has long thrived among young musicians in some central and eastern European countries – Hungary and Poland spring to mind as well as Slovakia - but has been largely ignored in the west, perhaps in favour of more obviously traditional music (a reaction that has been known to frustrate questing musicians).
      It’s striking indeed, and a single track is likely to grab attention, but on playing the whole album without understanding the lyrics it’s evident, as so often in World Music, that one isn’t getting the whole point; these are songs, not just sounds, and they’re in Slovak, of course. So also is the booklet, which simply gives the texts, instrumentation, credits and the logos of an improbable bunch of sponsors, and at this point, with copy date threatening, I don’t have much information in any language about them or Sui. Internet searching shows her doing some gigs in Slovakia and the Czech Republic, and that until this year it appears she was called Jana Ondrejková. I don’t suppose it’ll be long, though, before we hear more.



© 2002 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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