Press
The New York Times
"This is the sound of globalisation!"
"Traditional Polish songs, with their cutting vocals and meshed fiddles are the foundation of Warsaw Village Band's repertory. But while their lineup is primarily acoustic - hand drums, hammered dilcimer, violins, cello - their sensibilities are modern. They hear dance -club drive and trancey echoes in the songs and they use recording studio techniques to heighten the central drones and eerie percussive sounds in their songs.
Hints of reggae and guests like a scratching disc jockey should further infuriate purists"
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The New York Times
"Wailing Shamisens, Ferocious Polish Song and a Whiff of Cabaret"
One strategy was sheer ferocity.
That worked for the Warsaw Village Band, which played aggresive verions of traditional Polish songs, describing their music as "radical roots style" and "hardcore folk". Its fiddle player had dreadlocks!
Three women sang with the traditional cutting tone and drone harmonies of Slavic songs and the band spurred them on with more drones (from fiddle and cello), with drumbeats and the insistent pattering of hammered dulcimer.
The propulsion, generated by muscle power, could a relentless and invigorating as techno, but the voices sounded ancient"
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Washington Post (01/11/05)
Poland's Warsaw Village Band may be a folk music sextet, but that doesn't mean it employs polite strumming and quaint melodies. Sunday evening on the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage, this three-woman, three-man ensemble used violins, dulcimer, cello, Polish frame drum, marching band-style baraban drum, and high-pitched vocals to showcase the unique, raw style they referred to as Polish "roots music from the ancient to the future."
With the women upfront and the guys in back, the group featured songs from their two recent albums, "People's Spring" and "Uprooting." Although the one-hour set was often dominated by noisy waves of rhythmic bowing from the two violin players, their string work frequently lacked melodic variety. But the other instruments, and especially the haunting female vocals, took up the slack.
The women, led by youthful yet serious cellist Maja Kleszcz, turned mournful numbers such as "I Had a Lover" and "Red Apple" into showcases for "white voice." Though that style is sometimes described as shouting, this band showed that the high-pitched intonation is musical and mesmerizing. For the show closer, "The Rain Is Falling," the band engaged in three-part harmonies and feverishly upped the tempo of this cinematic, orchestral-like composition.
Warsaw Village Band's traditional songbook doesn't contain the hooks of contemporary pop, but the glorious timbres, the galloping percussion, the driving pings of the dulcimer and the dissonant staccato stroking of the cello delivered plenty of drama.
Steve Kiviat
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Rootsworld
“Proud, inquiring, revolutionary, masterly performed, imbued with a youthful enthusiasm that revitalizes you on every listen and manifests why it still means something to be searching for music all over the land, instead of being content to listen to mainstream pop.”
– Nondas Kitsos,
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Folkworld
“A very mature work with lots of energy. Another proof that we should have a closer look towards the Polish scene.” – Christian Moll,
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"Songlines" by Simon Broughton Febr. 2005
