Chłopi: Wesele Boryny

This is an extraordinary album recreating the sound of a wedding in central Poland in the late 19th century. The title Chłopi (The Peasants) comes from the novel written in 1908 for which Władysław Reymont won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1924. The wedding (Wesele) depicted in this album is between the main protagonist Maciej Boryna and his wife Jagna.

The novel Chłopi was apparently important in demonstrating to the Polish people that a real folk culture existed in central Poland (between Warsaw and Łódź) and not just in the Tatras where the tradition was widely appreciated in the early 20th century. The message has been slow to get through, because despite the revival of interest in Poland, an upcoming animated version of the novel uses Balkan rather than the ‘authentic’ Polish music for the wedding. But the authentic music is what we’re getting here and it's pretty glorious. The two bands are Kożuch and Napięcie, both at the heart of the traditional revival with singers Joanna Skowrońska and Róża Martyna Grabowska. In the excellent 17-page booklet (in both Polish and English) they say they are not trying to recreate the archaic sound of the late 19th century but are taking into account ‘the good and bad experiences of everything that has happened since Reymont: folklorism, socialist realism, ethnographic turns, decolonisation and feminism.’ That basically means that they’re playing in today's Polish dom tancy (dance house) style, although clarinettist Patryk Petersson is playing a copy of a 1790s instrument – listen to the wonderful ‘Zalotny’ – and the bands are playing with a lowered tuning. The tunes are sourced from several collections with advice from some living old masters. For those interested in Polish traditional music, this is quite a special release.