Music inspired by traditional folk melodies

[tufta]

I think we may start a new thread, inspired by:

Feb 24, 2013 14:42:59 GMT 1 pjotr said:

Their music has a resemblance with Frank Zappa

Great choice! „Hej bystro woda” is one of the songs or melodies most Poles know literally right from the craddle. It is a folk song from the Tatra Mountains and Podhale region: góralska music/music of the Tatra highlanders, very distinct and proud people living in Poland and Slovakia. 'Hej. bystro woda”, and more widely Góralska Music was and still is widely and eagerly adopted/fused/interpreted by musicians of different genres, from classical to pop.

Traditional interpretation of 'Hej bystro woda' with some nice pics of the region where that music was born



This kind of music is very much alive and widely played around Tatra Mountains




Hej, bystra wodo, by 'No To Co', band from the 1960-ties



Choral interpretation of 'Hej,bystro woda' from Poznañ


Another folks song, Hej, Krywaniu wysoki by group Trebunie Tutki,


Some Góralska and Jamaica music fusion: Trebunie Tutki and Twinkle Brothers


Zakopower,great band adopting Tatra region music, led by orginal Góral (Tatra highlander) who settled down in Warsaw.

Fusion from Zakopower


Góralska music and JAZZ fusion by Zbigniew Namys³owski (yes, THAT Namys³owski and Leszek Mo¿d¿er!


Halina Fr±ckowiak, from musical 'Na Szkle Malowane” (1970)


Czes³aw Niemen from the same musical '



More Góralska music-inspired hits









Homo Twist (Maciek Maleñczuk)


Skaldowie


Wojciech Kilar

[tufta]

Let's descend from the mountains into the fertile river valleys of Polish lowlands.





-

I hope no heavy metal fan will miss that one :

[pjotr]

Tufta,

I enjoyed this thread very much. Especially due to the cross overs and fusion of music, and the Polish peoples music of folk element in it. I grew up with Dutch gypsy music with Hungarian/Rumanian roots, some Russian Folk music and French chançon. My Polish grandparents from Poznań (originally from Warsaw) were not of the generation of the Long play record. I don't remember if they had a radio at home, they had a tiny black and white television (style fiftees or early sixtees). They were city people who would go occasionally to classical concerts, the theatre and maybe the Opera. Pop music or Folk/peoples music was not their thing I imagine. My Dziadek and babcia were to much people of Warsaw and Poznań, not rural country people. Although they liked the family estate of my dziadek family in North-Eastern Poland. (which was administrated by my dziadeks brother), they were very much Varsovians. New Varsovians, but Varsovians. Varsovoans who lived in Mokotów dzielnica (borough, district) of Warsaw. They were very sophisticated, civilized, social people. Very kind, very humble, very family oriented, very Roman-Catholic and Polish Patriotic (in a Pre-war sense) and pleasent to stay with. My babcia went to church every sunday of her life. She was a very pious woman. She must have sang there and heard a lot of church music (church choirs, maybe organ music and other music they play in Polish churches?) My dziadek, although being a Polish Catholic, wasn't that much of a church goer. My babcia often went alone. These differences exist within a family. My dziadek prefered reading books, making sunday walks to a lovely Poznan park, and he wrote letters all of his life. Until his eightees he had several correspondences. He was loved as a teacher of the girls lyceum in Warsaw, and some of his old pupils kept writing letters to him until he was an old man. I hope that this correspondences were a sense of relief for him for the humiliations he had to endure in the Post-war years. Communism had ruined his career. His principial stance blocked his opportunities in the Polish education system. He was a man of books, letters, economical tables, models and Pre-war civilization, ethics and values. For a long time I remembered their appartement and the building they lived in in ul. Adama Mickiewicza in Poznań. I forgot the number of their adress. But I believe that my parents who went to Poland in 1998 for the last time, told me that the apartment building was rebuilt, and that there was a medical institute there or some company in it. I don't remember exactly. The building was very old and therfor I think they have completely renovated it and changed it.

Maybe something like this: www.edictum.pl/kontakt.html

I don't remember music in their appartment, but maybe my memory fails me. There apartment was pleasent quiet, and had the refined sophistication of the "old generation", which stil had classical antiques furniture, the delicate taste of a pre-war generation of Poles, which spoke French and German next to Polish. I probably have already told you this, but for me visiting their place, their home, their country, was like visiting another time, another era, another world. Because the Polish peoples republic (with it's socialist system. And the dictatorship caused some old traditions or styles to be preserved, which had been lost in the West, like the Sewing shops of the tailors, the old fashionate barber for mens mustaches and beards, chimney sweepers with their black hats and brushes. It had a certain charm which was lost in the West, where most things had become automatised and leveled by competing supermarket chains and multi-nationals. Communist Poland had preserved elements of pre-war Poland (20-ies, 30-ies) and merged that with the present of that time seventies and eightees. I think that element of old Poland was the thing which Poles, the Polish people themselves kept. The exellent restored cities and towns. The Polish palaces, churches and cathedrals which were rebuilt, the heritage which was kept, despite the "New ear of Communism", the Polish Roman-Catholic church which kept the Polish Catholic culture on it's territory. And the Polish families, clubs, organisations, cultural world (artist circles, writers and poets), Samizdat (dissidents, the Underground Intelligentsia -the non-communist intellectuals of the 'old Polish intelligentsia'), non-communist student circles, skilled workers of the KOR/Solidarnosc and farmers which weren't forst into collective farms. (like in the Sovjet sovkhoz and Kolkhoz)
Poznań gave us (my sister and I) and important lesson in life. It gave us a different perspective on life than the one from our own provincial town in that far South-Western corner of the Netherlands on that small peninsula overthere. It gave us a broader, cosmopolitan perspective on life. We witnessed that part of our family spoke a different language, belonged to another people (another nationality) and that my mother came from a real country, a country with great people and a very fine culture (despite of the rotten system. But that system didn't made Poland any less beautiful and marvelous. Because we witnessed Polish city life, Polish towns, Polish villages -farm life, the Polish country, Polish lakes -vactions- and Polish mountains. Comparable to our Ardens experiances later on -after Poland-. The only difference was that these Polish mountains were larger than the Belgian mountains in my memories.)

My mother was raised by them and she listened to Radio Luxemburg. That was her taste, and that was Western Beat music of the sixtees, rock'n roll and soul from the USA, and maybe Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen. That was it, I think? And since 1967 living in the Netherlands she was exposed to the Dutch and Western music styles and groups. My parents (especially) my father were rather conservative though. Against the Nozems, Provo's, Western hippies, long hair wearing boys and men, against the leftwing Marxist (New Left) 1968 student generation (Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam, Nijmegen). They were not of the pop music generation. (I mean my father wasn't and my mother simply followed I think. I bought her a Beatles album once for the birthday. She liked it)

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nozem
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provo_(movement)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippy

Therefor I didn't make the connection with the Polish folk and pop music. We had Polish jazz records and Polush classical music though. But later, via these Polish cuture Forums (Your knowledge, experiance and fondness of Polish pop and Folk music) and listening to youtube, and reading here and there. I found out what was and is overthere in your country. Thanks for showing this, posting this and sharing this with us. I haven't heard a lot of Góralska music in my life, but this mix of Reggea and Góral is exellent.

Nice those folks that went from Zakopane to Warsaw to live and play there. It musn't be easy. It is never easy for countryboy's and girls to go to the capital or another large city and to settle there. You will be always seen by the big city people as country people. "Hé, country boy, what are you doing in big town, with you rural accent". Or, is Warsaw different?

Cheers,
Pieter

[tufta]

Pieter, no Warsaw is not different I guess there are a lot of Warsovians who would say something like that to people who came to the city recently: Hey, country boy, what are you doing in big town, with you rural accent, it doesn't fit with my old Varsovian's since 10 years already!""

The guy behind Zakopower is a very sophisticated an likeable person, you know, Pietia, he passed through KRAKÓW
nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sebastian_Karpiel-Bu%C5%82ecka

Noone would ever dare say something like that about a Krakowian!
;D ;D ;D

[tufta]

Still in the lowlands, note the sweet sound of a true VINYL


Kujawiak goes funky


Kujawiak fusion



Kujawiak in Chopin's music


and in Wieniawski's (don't miss everyone, a pearl!!)


The real thing

[pjotr]

Tufta,

Every capital and every large city needs new blood. It has always been that way. It is natural that from all parts of the country and even from abroad (Diaspora Polonia who come back and bring elements from the Polonia culture back. Like the Poles from the Great Immigration to Paris/France in the 19th century, or some Poles who came back from the USA and Great Britain after the collapse of Communism) come to the city. New generations of students, new Young Urban Professionals, a new generation of rural people, who transform within one generation from small, provincial town people, in New Varsovians. (or New Amsterdammers, in the Dutch perspective) Even foreign migrants will add to that flavor. The Ukrainian workers who built New Warsaw in the ninetees and the early 21th century (these first 13 years), because the Polish workers were building Berlin, the London city, Rotterdam, The Hague (especially the Hague has a large Poliush community: You were comparing The Hague with Warsaw. Well those the Hague Skyskrapers were largely built by Polish workers -together with Dutch, Bulgarian, Lithuanian, Estonian and Rumanian workers, but mostly Poles-). These Ukrainians will stay in Warsaw, or some of them, an they will be Ukrainian-Poles, Ukrainian Varsovians, next to the Karpatian Varsovians, Mazury Varsovians, Pommerian Varsovians, Silesian Varsovians, Krakovian Varsovians and Poznan Varsovians.

Cheers,
Pieter

[tufta]

Pieter!!!! ;D

If you undestood that I am complaning about 'new arrivals' your impression was wrong. For which only I am to blame as I probably joke too much and care too less about some antagonism you have asked about - if it exists in Warsaw. I have to confess of yet another sin in my previous comment I have been trying to tease our host Bo, of course. Which is diffiicult as he seems to be distanced to the matter almost as much as I am!

[pjotr]

Mar 5, 2013 12:17:24 GMT 1 tufta said:

Still in the lowlands, note the sweet sound of a true VINYL

Kujawiak goes funky


Kujawiak fusion



Kujawiak in Chopin's music


and in Wieniawski's (don't miss everyone, a pearl!!)


The real thing

Thank you, I really loved this series. Especially the experimental and very good Polish jazz, but also the Wieniavski and Chopin. Love it.

I have to make more of an effort to appreciate the country, Peoples folk thing though. Excuse me I am a deeply city rooted boy, being raised by Rotterdam city and Warsaw city parents, with second lives in Amsterdam and Poznań. Spending the last half of their lives in a provincial town, raising their kids (my sister and I)

But you never can take the cosmopolitan city mentality out of them. Being attached as they are to fine art, culture, history, literature, cinema, music, Europe, romanesque, Gothic, Baroque, rococo, classicism, Jugendstil/'art nouveau, impressionisme/expressionisme, Fauvism, and certain aspects of surealism, magic realism and abstract expressionism as they are. We loved the Ardennes mountains, the Polish, Belgian and Dutch country side, the coast, the smell of farm land (cows, horses, sheep, goats, geeze and chickens), but we will never be rural people, country folks. We are city people for a few generations now.

Cheers,
Pieter

[tufta]

My pleasure, Pieter. Polish culture, and music especially is permeated, soaked with village, folk elements. That includes the culture or subculture of the biggest Polish cities.

[pjotr]

It is a great thing that the Polish composers and other European composers used peoples music, folk music in their compositions. That they were inspired by the rural music of their country folk. That their music in that sense got a 'national' root, that it got a regional flavor in that endless sea of European classical music and other music.

Wieniavski and Chopin used folk influnces. List did that too.


Frederic Chopin

Chopin found himself invited at an early age to play at private soirées, and at eight he made his first public appearance at a charity concert. Three years later he performed in the presence of the Russian tsar Alexander I, who was in Warsaw to open Parliament. Playing was not alone responsible for his growing reputation as a child prodigy. At seven he wrote a Polonaise in G Minor, which was printed, and soon afterward a march of his appealed to the Russian grand duke Constantine, who had it scored for his military band to play on parade. Other polonaises, mazurkas, variations, ecossaises, and a rondo followed, with the result that, when he was 16, his family enrolled him at the newly formed Warsaw Conservatory of Music. This school was directed by the Polish composer Joseph Elsner, with whom Chopin already had been studying musical theory.

No better teacher could have been found, for, while insisting on a traditional training, Elsner, as a Romantically inclined composer himself, realized that Chopin’s individual imagination must never be checked by purely academic demands. Even before he came under Elsner’s eye, Chopin had shown interest in the folk music of the Polish countryside and had received those impressions that later gave an unmistakable national colouring to his work. At the conservatory he was put through a solid course of instruction in harmony and composition; in piano playing he was allowed to develop a high degree of individuality.


Henryk Wieniawski

Henryk Wieniawski, (1835, Lublin — 1880, Moscow), was one of the most celebrated violinists of the 19th century. The Polish violinist and composer, Wieniawski perfomed in Russia, the USA and Brussels too.

Wieniawski was a child prodigy who entered the Paris Conservatory at age 8 and graduated from there with the first prize in violin at the unprecedented age of 11. He became a concert violinist at age 13 and began touring Europe with his brother Joseph, a pianist. His wide-ranging concert tours brought him international fame. In 1860 he was appointed violin soloist to the tsar of Russia, and from 1862 to 1869 he taught at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. In 1872–74 he toured the United States, playing with the pianist Anton Rubinstein, and he subsequently taught for a time at the Brussels Conservatory.

As a violinist Wieniawski was admired for his rich, warm tone, glowing temperament, and perfect technique. His own compositions for violin are Romantic in style and were intended to display his virtuosity. He composed two violin concerti, one in F-sharp Minor (Opus 14) and a quite popular one in D Minor (Opus 22). His other compositions include Le Carnaval russe (Opus 11), Legende (Opus 17), Scherzo-tarantelle (Opus 16), and études, mazurkas, and polonaises.

[pjotr]

Mar 5, 2013 15:20:42 GMT 1 tufta said:

My pleasure, Pieter. Polish culture, and music especially is permeated, soaked with village, folk elements. That includes the culture or subculture of the biggest Polish cities.

Tufta,

Thank you. I think you are right ofcourse. Cities develop from the influx of tows and village people who come from rural area's of the country side. Peoples and Folk music have inspired many city musicians, because they loved the pure, 'healthy', authentic, rural country element of it.

For instance the Chicago city blues has rural, Southern-elements, it is rooted in the Southern blacks, cotton workers (former slaves) who moved to the North to find work there and who took their music with them. That music developped from "country" music to city music.

Folk music

Folk music, traditional and generally rural music was originally passed down through families and other small social groups. Typically, folk music, like folk literature, lives in oral tradition; it is learned through hearing rather than reading. It is functional in the sense that it is associated with other activities, and it is primarily rural in origin.

In the 20th century, transmission through recordings and mass media began to replace much of the face-to-face learning. In comparison with art music, which brings aesthetic enjoyment, and popular music, which (often along with social dancing) functions as entertainment, folk music is more often associated with other activities, such as calendric or life-cycle rituals, work, games, enculturation, and folk religion; folk music is also more likely to be participatory than presentational.

Generally, “folk music” refers to music that broad segments of the population—particularly the lower socioeconomic classes—understand, and with which they identify. In this respect it is the rural counterpart to urban popular music, although that music depends mainly on the mass media—recordings, radio, television, and to some degree the Internet—for dissemination.

In the 20th century, the role of professionals as performers and carriers of folk traditions expanded dramatically (I think about for instance Bob Dylan). Folk music as it is believed to have existed in earlier times may be discussed separately from periods of revival such as that of 19th-century European nationalism and the 20th-century revivals, shortly before and after World War II, that were motivated by political agendas. In the context of popular music, performances of “folk music” may be distinguished by the use of songs with political agendas and the use of traditional instruments and acoustic guitars. On the other side of the musical spectrum, lines between folk music and art music were blurred beginning in the 19th century, when art music composers introduced songs from folklore into urban musical culture.

Since than Folk music has entered the Urban art music world of city music. Folk music became part of the professional music world with the emergence of the Singer songwriter musicians.



















Polish Balkan pop band (Polish-Serbian)


Good band and very comical, ironic song



I like this singer and her band, but can't find info about her. I think she must be Russian, Ukrainian or Caucacian?

[pjotr]

We live in a wonderful time that the city people (we) have discovered our country roots and appreciate the rural music of the flat (low-) and high lands, the Folk music of the rural populations.

The fusian of high culture and low (people/folk) culture created and creates great new culture and thus new music, which comes from the ecclectic, merger, fusion of the sophisticated, professional, Urban, educated, city music and the rural, pure, authentic, people based Folk music of the villages, settlements and little towns of the countryside. The music of the peasents, land workers and farmers met the music of the Industrial workers, the fishermen, the sailors of harbour cities, the middle classes, high classes, aristocracy and cultural intelligentsia of the Metropoles. (the large city people) That infection, inspiration and input of Folk music into the city music changed the city music, because it couldn't stay like it was. Different styles will stay segregated or independent from eachother, but they will be aware of the other music that exists, and which has enriched the music!

[pjotr]

Tata Kazika by the Dutch band ADHD Spietmobiel. (comment Pieter: Look at the comical bandname)

Song about Speedy's cassette tape with Polish music called Tata Kazika.
Speedy's quest to find out more about Tata Kazika went deep into Eastern Europe. Eventually he meets a Polish woman in Roden, the Netherlands. She brings him the original CD: Tata Kazika from a band called Kult. The CD is a tribute to the father (Tata) of the singer of the band (Kazika), who happend to be a Polish folk singer himself.
The music from this song is based on a piece from La Folia by Arcangelo Corelli.
ADHD Spietmobiel is a punky ska taverna band with Speedy aka Piepke aka Mouse as a frontman.
Also known from bands like de Boegies and Jammah Tammah.

[pjotr]

[tufta]

Mar 6, 2013 17:08:42 GMT 1 pjotr said:

Pieter, fine music and great point you've made Yes, that's Polish music inspired by foreign folk, so to say, as neither polka nor blues is 'primarily' Polish. Strange that a lot of people think polka is Polish.

In the same line, Polish-Ukrainian merger

[tufta]

Archetype (with English and Gypsy subtitles)



,
,
Polonised version by Bosnian and Polish superstars

[pjotr]

Mar 7, 2013 11:07:35 GMT 1 tufta said:

Archetype (with English and Gypsy subtitles)


Polonised version by Bosnian and Polish superstars

This is the typical sound of Balkan Gypsy music, wonder ful mixed with Polish influences in the second video. Gypsy music can be very intense. I grew up with the Rumanian folk (Peoples) Sinti or Roma music of the Royal Gypsy orchestra Mirando, Gregor Serban and Lajos Veres (1912 - 1981).




This is the Dutch Hungarian Gypsy music I grew up with. My father was very fond of it. Before disco Dutch students of students corps used to invite Gypsy bands and danced on Gypsy music in the fourtees and fiftees. My father had a lot of Gypsy music records, and the house was often filled with the gypsy music, next to the classical music and french chançon. This is the music of my child years.



This was my fathers record. Childhood sentiment. This was probably the first Peoples music or 'Folk' music I heard in my life, Gypsy Folk music:







Typical Rumanian gypsy piano. My father had Gregor Serban records too


Colea Serban born in 1924 and brother of Gregor Serban studied ad the conservatorium of The Hague.

In 1958 he had a terrible accident and broke one of his fingers even that could not stop him to play life on television with only his left hand only you are able to switch from right to left hand melody playing if you are a greath pianist this is one of the best pianist ever lived also for classical music, it doesn't mather what you want to here he played it from classical to Jazz and from Jazz to Gipsy music



Here another exellent Rumanian Gypsy band who played in the Netherlands.


Gypsy music was often played at royal happenings, weddings, parties, in old pubs, small concert halls, festivals and in places where Gypsies gather, like their Gypsy camps.

The Balkan-Polish music you posted reminded me about the Yugoslavian movie, "Black cat, white Cat"

Here the entire movie on youtube, enjoy. ;D

This is a very dramatic and in the same time deeply funny movie. I had tears in my eyes and pain in my belly from laughing about this movie. The characters, the absurd situations, Gypsy and Yugoslavian atmosphere and mentality. It is both grotesque and very realistic and human in the same time.

Gypsies in Poland

[pjotr]

Mar 7, 2013 10:44:11 GMT 1 tufta said:

Strange that a lot of people think polka is Polish.

Tufta,

I never thought about Polka as tyical Polish music. It sounds more German to me with it's hoempapa, schlager kind of tune. Polish peoples, folk music has more swing, melody and Rhythm.



I think that most of the Folk music in the world and thus also Blues and Rhythm & Blues have roots in rural peoples music. So in my opinion also Polish folk music is connected to that, because the early settlers from Poland in the USA brought their musical traditions, heritage and music instruments with them. They must have played in the late 19th century and 20th century. Some of them returned to Poland. Later Poland got exellent Jazz, Blues and rock musicians, who made their own Polish version of that international border crossing music. They made their own typical version with their own soul, spririt and musicality. I don't think about Folk and Blues as being American or Anglo-Saxon exclusively. You have exellent musicians everywhere, and all music influences all other music. Musicians are always interested in what musicians from other countries, continents and traditions play. Todays musicians are influenced by world music.

Cheers,
Pieter

[pjotr]

Mar 7, 2013 10:44:11 GMT 1 tufta said:

In the same line, Polish-Ukrainian merger

This is an exellent merger. It also shows that music always crosses borders, and that a fusion of the music of two neighbours can have exellent consequences. The mix of Polish and Ukrainain influences creates a wonderful sound. It actually sounds a little bit like Yugoslavian Balkan music to my ears. But that is just my humble opinion. I like the cheerful, swing, melody of this temperamentful and joyful music. Good musicians.