- Cloud Valley Music website -
- Andrew Cronshaw website -
- Andrew Cronshaw MySpace -

- Back to Reviews Introduction page -

Written in fRoots issue 305, 2008
 

WARSAW VILLAGE BAND
Infinity
Jaro JARO 4289-2 (2008)

Mercifully hot on the heels of the remix album Upmixing comes a proper CD from the Warsaw village, following a year off for the band in 2007 because of singer-cellist Maja Kleszcz’s maternity leave. Maja (the daughter of Wlodzimierz Kleszcz, Polskie Radio broadcaster and instigator of much of today’s roots-fusion scene from the Warsaw Village Band to the amusing Trebunie-Tutki/reggae collisions of Twinkle Inna Polish Stylee) has become ever more central in the band since joining it at the age of just 14, and with her partner, fiddler Wojtek Krzak, she’s its main writer and vocalist.
      The opening track’s trademark sawing fiddles and cello over pounding baraban drum supporting energetic, edgy multiple female vocals suggest that perhaps this will be pretty much more of the same, but it soon becomes clear that it isn’t. It shows the band refining and developing, with a wider variety of rhythms, sounds and paces and the much-strengthened singing of Maja, hammered dulcimer player Magdalena Sobczak and fiddler Sylwia Swiatkowska, on their most assertive release to date.
      There are references in the inspiration of some tracks to non-Polish musics such as blues, raga, reggae, African music and a reconnection with Swedish polska, reflecting all the travelling they’ve done since their unexpected and unhyped winning in 2004 of a BBC Radio 3 Award for World Music. But these influences aren’t a diversion; they open up new perspectives on Polish traditional music. The album’s part-trad, part new-made compositions and the excitement of its sound “bring it all home”, to quote the title of a compilation Maja’s dad made on his Kamahuk label in 1993. It leads onward both the tradition and the new enthusiasm for Polish roots music at home and abroad that the WVB, together with longer-established but less widely travelled bands such as Kwartet Jorgi, Trebunie Tutki and the St Nicholas Orchestra, has been influential in arousing. (It was clear from the range of interesting young bands performing at Polskie Radio’s New Tradition festival earlier this year that there’s plenty more to come).
      The four guest performers on Infinity are all Polish: a wild improvising vocal from Tatra mountain traditional musician Jan Trebunia Tutka, darkly slithering viola and a soaring vocal from Kroke’s Tomasz Kukurba over ominous chugging bowed strings, some scratching from DJ Feel-X, and the soul-funk vocal of Natalia Przybysz of the band Sistars combining powerfully with that of her old school pal Maja in traditional chant lyrics. (It’d be good sometime to hear further collaboration with trumpeter Piotr Korzen Korzeniowski, whose guesting was such an asset to the WVB’s People’s Spring album).
      Very early on the WVB scratchy-string sound, raw as it was, was massively and effectively enhanced by hefty use of delay and reverb. Nowadays the sounds – principally voices, fiddles, cello, hammered dulcimer and deep skin-headed drums – while more varied in texture and application, are all still acoustic, writ large by a healthy application of the facilities of the studio. No shortage of strong rhythms, but no swiftly-dating sampled beats.
      Not taking the obvious paths down which success can sometimes seduce a band, it’s a bold album, elbowing new space for roots music in a Poland that is forging ahead in the New Europe and just might, unlike so many European countries, embrace rather than ignore the riches it already possesses in its traditional music. What makes WVB a ‘world music band’ is that it takes Polish music to the world and in so doing intensifies it.

      www.jaro.de


© 2008 Andrew Cronshaw
 

You're welcome to quote from reviews on this site, but please credit the writer and fRoots.

Links:
fRoots - The feature and review-packed UK-based monthly world roots music magazine in which these reviews were published, and by whose permission they're reproduced here.

It's not practical to give, and keep up to date, current contact details and sales sources for all the artists and labels in these reviews, but try Googling for them, and where possible buy direct from the artists.
CDRoots.com in the USA, run by Cliff Furnald, is a reliable and independent online retail source, with reviews, of many of the CDs in these reviews; it's connected to his excellent online magazine Rootsworld.com 

For more reviews click on the regions below

NORDIC        BALTIC        IBERIA (& islands)   

CENTRAL & EASTERN EUROPE, & CAUCASUS   

OTHER EUROPEAN        AMERICAS        OTHER, AND WORLD IN GENERAL

- Back to Reviews Introduction page -