Wiązanka

The opening track of Wiązanka (The Bunch) launches us straight into a wild mazurka in the spirit of a rural wedding. In fact the album cover is inspired by wedding photos of the grandparents of Paula Kinaszewska, the violinist in the group – although there weren't three of them in that marriage. The trio WoWaKin are Kinaszewska (fiddle), Mateusz Wachowiak (accordion) and Bartlomiej Woźniak (drums) with the band name being a composite of the three. Having started in 2016, they are relatively new on the scene. They are fine musicians inspired by the traditional revival kicked off by the Janusz Prusinowski Kompania and others a couple of decades ago, but also inspired by veteran master musicians, some still alive, whom they heard and acknowledge with photos and brief blogs in the album. The music is essentially village-style dance pieces from central Poland like the opening mazurkas from Władysław Kosylak and Tadeusz Moczarski. These are alternated with slower songs sung by Kinaszewska, like ‘Wianeczek’, a wedding song of farewell with Woźniak on cimbalom and the lovely ‘Rutka’ for which Woźniak picks up a banjolele.

Alongside the three-beat mazurkas there is the two-beat ‘Polka z Szydłowca’ with which they have a bit of fun playing it like an old record slowing down and speeding up again. WoWaKin are a band invigorated by the tradition, for so long ignored, and having a lot of fun with it. I suspect their audiences do too.