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Written in fRoots issue 349, 2012


WARSAW VILLAGE BAND
Nord
Jaro JARO 4308-2 (2012)

The press release tries to frame this as a “musical summit as a tribute to the heroes and mystics, the Viking warriors, and the poets of the Saami and Inuit peoples”.
     It isn’t that. There’s little discernibly Sámi or Inuit in it (though there’s a bit of Native American type vocalising on War Is Coming) and while the Vikings certainly travelled and invaded far and wide, including to Poland, that was well over a millennium ago and any identifiable musical traces are long gone. In the 17th century Polish dance music caught on in Sweden, though, prompting the birth of polska, and WVB shares gutty impulse with Sweden’s Hedningarna, so collaborating here on the opening two tracks with its current members (Anders Norudde, Totte Mattson and Samuel Andersson) during a visit to Warsaw makes sense, and the blend works rather well.
     No, the album is essentially and splendidly Polish music, arguably the most interesting, deep-digging and accomplished the band has made.
     With the departure of fiddler Wojtek Krzac and cellist-singer Maja Kleszcz, who weren’t in the original Kapela ze wsi Warszawa but came to be the most visible members of the band, there’s been a re-vamping.
     A strong three-woman vocal front line has emerged, comprising hammered dulcimer player and fiddler Magdalena Sobczak-Kotnarowska, Sylwia Swiatkowska, fiddler and player of the revived Polish vertical fiddle from Plock, and fiddler Ewa Walecka. Long-time members Maciej Szajkowski - a prime mover not only of this band but in other areas of Poland’s steam-gathering folk music scene - and Piotr Glinski provide the frame-drum and baraban bashing, with recent addition Pawel Mazurczak on double bass. Harking back to the work of Piotr Korzen Korzeniowski on 2002’s People’s Spring, Milosz Gawrylkiewicz guests on trumpet and flugelhorn on three tracks.
     The material melds tradition and composition, with much of the latter being the work of Swiatkowska. The accomplishment, subtlety and skill shown here hasn’t diminished the wildness or excitement in a varied picture-show of melody and rhythm, full of raw and exciting vocal and instrumental abrasiveness, only occasionally touching on the driving fiddle-scrape and drum-thunder onslaught that was the staple for the band in its live shows but was becoming something of a one-trick pony.
     This one moves on from attitude and iconoclasm; it’s a very substantial piece of work full of ideas and visions, repaying repeated listens with interest.

www.jaro.de


© 2012 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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