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Global Hits
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The World, Global Hits >>
Today's global hit takes us back to the roots. The World's Marco Werman introduces us to a band that's committed to a venerable folk music tradition from eastern Poland.
The countryside to the north of Warsaw is not known for its beauty. Mazovia, as the area is known, is flat. And it's vast. It was the property of Polish kings in the 16th century. But the soil wasn't fertile, and few people stayed in Mazovia. Those who did belonged to a handful of Slavic tribes, and their culture remains obscure. But not to Polish musician Wotjek Szpak. He's a fiddler with the young ensemble Warsaw Village Band. They play mostly music from Mazovia. Wotjek describes it as hardcore folk.
Wotjek: Hardcore because our music, traditional music, is not very nice. And sometimes for people not from Poland, it sounds a little bit barbarian.
Warsaw Village Band represents a small group of Poles who have taken an interest in the roots music of Mazovia. For many years under Poland's communist regime, musicians didn't perform traditional music like this. Wotjek Szpak says the government was skilled at creating a uniform culture across Poland.
Wotjek: Communistic governments very successful tried to kill our music, our traditions. You know, you couldn't hear traditional music. We had something like government bands playing neo-traditional music. It was really awful because it was never connected with really traditional music.
Some of the songs in Poland's real traditional repertoire can go on for 30 minutes, even an hour, in trance-like fashion. Interestingly that appeals to some young Poles who spent their adolescence at nightlong raves with their own trance rhythms. The youth who listen to the music of Warsaw Village Band are partly in search for an authentic Polish cultural identity. But Wotjek Szpak also believes Warsaw Village Band is trying to assert Poland's own traditions against modern pop culture.
Wotjek: I have nothing against pop culture because I love Bob Marley, I love Hendrix, I like paintings of Andy Warhol, and I have nothing against really good pop culture. But nowadays we've got a lot of plastic pop like Britney Spears or something like this. And this is much more popular everywhere than traditions of countries for instance. People will know more about the life of Britney Spears than about their roots.
The roots are more than evident in the music of Warsaw Village Band. What's harder to make out is how this ensemble has modernized those roots.
The song "Cranes" is traditional. The original words told children to leave the city, go the country, and be no one's servants. Wotjek Szpak says nothing has really changed in the way Warsaw Village Band plays it. The group simply hooks into the defiant message and heightens its power.
Wotjek: This melody comes from Mazovia area and we took it from old traditional violin player. And the melody was the same but we pushed a new spirit there.
The spirit of Warsaw Village Band's hardcore Polish folk is featured on the group's new recording "people's Spring." For The World, I'm Marco Werman. 04/13/04 >> go there
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