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Written in fRoots issue 345, 2012


WOLOSI I LASONIOWIE
Wolosi i Lasoniowie
Unzipped Fly (UZF) UFCD 003 (2011)

Wolosi is a trio of musicians from the living tradition of Trojwies, a group of three villages in the Silesian Beskidy highlands, at the western end of the Carpathians on Poland’s southern borders with the Czech Republic and Slovakia. They play fiddle, 3-string viola, Polish bagpipe and double bass.
     Lasoniowie are the two Lason brothers, classically-trained musicians from the nearby city of Katowice, on violin and cello.
     Joining forces, the quintet evoke not only Beskidian village music but a Central European velvety darkness drawing parallels with fellow-Poles Kroke from another southern city, Kraków, in reflecting the continuum of musics and memories along the sweep of Carpathians eastward to Romania, and their awareness of a wider musical world.
     It’s sparkling, full-blooded and glorious-toned, a heart-lifting surge of brilliantly-played, slithering, thrilling, scampering, surging, sobbing fiddles and chugging bowed bass. A wild polka, a poised and lyrical melody in the hesitating Rain Comes From Moravia, an embrace of the wayward sounds of the highlanders’ bagpipe in Gajdy, or a burst of passionate, fluttering tango.
     A splendid CD, in a very nice hardback book-style package, from a young, strangely-named label that’s proving to be one to check for the new Polish roots-related music.
     www.unzippedfly.pl


© 2011 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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