The Old Polish Style of Folk Music - Really Old

The New Tradition festival, a leading folk music festival in Poland, is held over three days in the Lutoslawski Polish Radio Concert Studio. Audiences will hear Polish groups, including Kapela ze Wsi Warszawa (Warsaw Village Band).

This ain't even the folk music your great-great babcia would be familiar with. It's the really old style of singing in "White Voice." Back when shepards yelled from hill top to hill top. The vocal technique is like that sort of communication. The Warsaw Village Band traveled throughout Poland to find and record older musicians who still played almost-forgotten styles of music, thereafter incorporating those melodies into new songs and expounding upon them. It takes a little time to start to grow on you if your the kind of person who appreciates music in all its forms. Most schlubs will find it irritating.

The first New Tradition event was organized in the studio 10 years ago. It soon turned out that folk music performed by new musical groups drawing on Slavic folklore has established its own faithful audience. This year, 24 ensembles entered, and half of them qualified for the final auditions.

The genre's popularity is thanks to performers like Kapela ze Wsi Warszawa, the festival winner in 1998. The Folk World music periodical considered their performance at the Tanz & Folk Fest in Germany as the second best folk performance of 2000. Soon after the group appeared in the European market as the Warsaw Village Band, and won the prestigious BBC Radio 3 Awards for World Music in the Newcomer category in 2004. Schlubs found that irritating.

Take 6 minutes to see & hear. Unless of course you are a schlub. You're probably hearing Maryla Rodowicz as you entered this page. You can scroll down a few posts and put her on pause before clicking on the music video(s).


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Żurawie - Comment on Video Style:
The band's very name appears to evoke what troubles them about Poland's new capitalism after the nightmare of Communism: many large Polish cities do not have suburbs in the traditional sense, leading to unsettling transitions directly from city to field.