The Spirit of the Mountains

The Trebunie-Tutki are Poland's best-known band playing traditional podhale (highland) music, but they are also famed for their reggae fusions with Adrian Sherwood and the Twinkle Brothers in the early 90s. On this album, the Tatras meet the Caucasus here, in an inspired combination of two mountain musical styles from Poland and Georgia.

Polish highland music, from the deep south of the country, is distinctive and proud, characterised by angular melodies, high vocals, bagpipes, flutes and sawing strings. The Georgian vocals are characterised by rich polyphonic harmonies plus, on this album, plucked strings and bagpipes. The two repertoires are juxtaposed rather than combined, so the album opens with a pair of songs praising ancestors. Anyone who's attended a Georgian feast will have made countless toasts to ancestors and departed family members, and the Georgian song is followed by a Polish one about the spirits of the mountains by Krzysztof Trebunia-Tutka. A song to Giewont, one of the spectacular mountains in the Tatras is interleaved with a soulful solo on the duduk (double-reed flute). Love songs, brigands’ songs, dance songs and songs of heroic deaths are juxtaposed, elided and wrapped up in some furious instrumental playing on violins, bagpipes and flutes. There is no spirit lacking here.