Warsaw Village Band (Polish: Kapela ze wsi Warszawa) is a band from Warsaw, Poland, that plays traditional Polish folk music tunes combined with modern elements.
According to the band’s creative manifesto, it was formed as a response to mass culture and narrow-mindedness, “which in fact leads to [the] destruction of human dignity.” Indeed, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the expansion of the European Union to most of the former Warsaw Pact countries, Poland’s economy has grown dramatically, while at the same time ushering in investment by a number of multinational corporations, leading to concerns of globalism and loss of Poland’s cultural identity.
Notably, Warsaw Village Band have revived several musical traditions that were all but lost in Poland. The band use instruments rarely heard in modern music: frame drums, the hurdy-gurdy and the suka, a Polish folk fiddle stopped with the fingernails rather than the fingers, similar to the Bulgarian gadulka, the sarangi, or the rebec. The suka was practically unknown to the Polish people until member Sylwia Swiatkowska began to play it in the band’s concerts, and, later, on their albums. Additionally, many of the band’s vocals are sung in a loud and powerful style remakably like the “open-throated” singing styles in Bulgarian music, called bialy glos (white voice). This style of singing was used by shepherds in the Polish mountains to be heard for long distances.
Warsaw Village Band have also used modern elements in their music. Wykorzenienie contains scratching by the Polish hip hop artist DJ Feel-X, most likely as a nod to the phenomenal popularity of hip hop in Poland.
So cool…
A.