Karolina Cicha & Bart Pałyga / Poland
Karolina Cicha’s artistic activity is very impressive, Her successive experiments are up to the highest artistic level. This time, the award winner of the Grand Prix of the New Tradition Festival, who took the challenge to deal with Różewicz’s poetry, music of minorities which once lived in Podlasie or even Pakistani tradition, comes up with a new project.
Together with Bart Pałyga, well known to the folk stage, she takes another difficult but fascinating challenge. In their album Płyta Tatarska (The Tatar Record), they try to re-create the music of Podlasie Tatars.
Original music of Tatars who settled in Podlasie in the 15th century has not survived. For centuries Polish Tatars cultivated their Oriental cooking traditions, their different rites and religion, but music they brought with them went silent together with their language. No one knows what and how they played, when they came to Poland. Cicha and Pałyga decided to revive that forgotten music. Seeking the material for the recording took them three years. The musicians followed the traces of still living Tatar traditions in Tatarstan and Crimea. They also ventured to go further East, to explore the archaic sounds of Asian steppes. On their record you can hear goatskin-covered kobyz, Oriental saz and dotar that can be played while riding a horse. Throat singing, the sound of the Jew’s harp and the clapping of horse hooves can also be heard. Cicha and Pałyga are a duo of multi-instrumentalists fascinated with music of ethnic minorities in Northeastern Poland. Karolina specializes in playing simultaneously several instruments: she sings, plays the accordion and the keyboard, operates percussion with her feet. Bart is surrounded by a multitude of ethnic instruments while on stage, selecting a unique sound for every music piece. His collection includes, among other instruments, morin khuur, Płock fiddle, saz, kobyz, koryto, dotar, mandola, various kinds of Jew’s harps, daf, rig, and other instruments. He also practices throat singing and aliquot singing. Four years ago the duo released the acclaimed record Wieloma językami (9 Languages).
Karolina Cicha has the following records to her credit: Wawa2010.pl – with interesting duets singing songs about Warsaw, Do ludożerców (To Cannibals) – to Tadeusz Różewicz’s poetry, Yiddishland – based on texts by Jewish poets from Northeastern Poland, and Poland-Pakistan. Music Without Borders, produced jointly with the Pakistani master Shafqat Ali Khan.
Bart Pałyga cooperated with Maria Pomianowska, and co-created ensembles: Yerba Mater, Masala, Village Kollektiv, Gadająca Tykwa, Mosaic.
The concert took place in 2017.