Laboratorium Piesni - Karanfilče Devojče

 #Laboratorium Piesni #world music #European folk #Eastern European folk #traditional #polyphonic chant #Slavic folk music #a capella #white voice #Polish #music video

Things you can learn from traditional folk music: You know what’s the least cool thing on Earth when you’re a teenager in Poland? Traditional folk music, that’s what. Only village grandmas would perform it when I was a kid, they sang in regional dialect which sounded weird and archaic, and the lyrics never made any sense. “A rose grew in my garden, tell me dear Marysia if you’ll marry me. How can I tell you this, how can I know if my mom will agree.” Totally relatable for a kid who’s not going to marry anyone for at least the next six hundred years, and is certainly not going to ask her mom for permission if she finally decides to do so.
But the worst thing of all was “Marysia”. In Polish and other Eastern European languages every name comes in several different forms. There’s an official version for adults you don’t know very well, there’s a “naughty kid” version which in my days was the only acceptable form to be used among teenagers, and there’s Marysia. This is a form of my name Maria used either when speaking to little children or to someone you’d like to be tender with. When you’re a teenage punk rebel it almost sounds like an insult. Somehow in the old times people weren’t as creative in naming kids as they are now, so literally every traditional Polish song had a Marysia or Kasieńka in it. Being the only Marysia in class that had a lot of such songs assigned in the school curriculum was a great opportunity for all other kids to make fun of you. It took me many years to find traditional music pleasant to listen to, or even acceptable.
The first band that did this for me was Arkona, who sneakily smuggled traditional folk influences into their heavy metal songs. They sang in Russian, so even if the lyrics were still ridiculous and archaic it didn’t bother me at all cause I only understood a few words. I fell in love with Arkona because of their incredible lead singer, a five foot blonde girl with the most Earth-shattering voice. She could start with a touching, lyric melody and change it into a demonic growl a few seconds later. I hadn’t thought I would find female growl attractive, but Masha carries such power in hers it’s fucking unbelievable.
With time I got to enjoy other traditional Eastern European songs, even if they didn’t come together with growl and heavy guitar riffs. I learned to appreciate the ancient wisdom in these ridiculously archaic lyrics that puts my remarkably modern life in perspective. Yes, I’m an independent, self-sufficient woman who can choose whether or whom to marry, but this simply wasn’t the case for my female ancestors. Life in a village used to be incredibly hard, and making a living independently wasn’t an option for anyone, not only women. No one would think about independence when they struggled to survive. Even my own grandma got married at the age of eighteen to a 30-year-old she just met, as she explained, mostly to escape from her abusive stepfather.
It also serves as a guiding anchor through different stages of life. This is not a kind of music you would create as a masterpiece to be performed on stage. These were ordinary songs sung by ordinary people as they went through different events in their lives. There were at least a few for every occasion. Birth and death, love and heartbreak, work and rest, joy and sorrow, marriage and pesky in-laws, sowing and reaping, there was a song that could help you make sense of any of these experiences, and process the emotions that arise with it.
Music creates a kind of emotional resonance that words alone will never do. Singing together synchronizes minds and souls in a way that is difficult to describe, as I learned in traditional music workshops. If you’re going through childbirth, death, marriage, or breakup, everyone singing with you validates your experience, shows you that they understand what you’re going trough, and that what is happening is a normal part of life. It integrates your emotions into the whole community, and helps you heal the challenging ones.
I have my own wedding coming soon and I want a ceremony that won’t be just a government official talking about civil rights and obligations. Even if they prepared the most touching speech, it would still be processed through the rational parts of the brain first. I’d rather go directly into the hearts and souls. So though the irony is not lost on me, I’m going to bring some of the ancient wedding ritual songs I used to despise so much as a kid to guide us and all of our guests through the most important moment of our lives so far. I even put a “Marysia” on our wedding invitation cards.  From: https://madeincosmos.net/things-you-can-learn-from-traditional-folk-music/ 

Laboratorium Piesni - Lecieli Zurauli

 #Laboratorium Piesni #world music #European folk #Eastern European folk #traditional #polyphonic chant #Slavic folk music #a capella #white voice #Polish #music video

Laboratorium Piesni (polish: Song Laboratory) is a female-run collective music project, founded in Poland in 2013. The vast majority of their songs are from Polish and Eastern European folk traditions, though they also incorporate other sources. They also host workshops to help people develop their voice and “awaken the human musicality.” Laboratorium Piesni’s primary musical focus is polyphony (multiple voices with little to no musical accompaniment), which is the dominant form of ritual and folk music for animist cultures, also  surviving into Europe as a dominant form into the 1500’s. This music is also known as “a capella,” but many groups have moved away from this Christian label (“a capella” literally means, “in the way of the chapel”).  From: https://abeautifulresistance.org/pagan-music-list/2019/3/23/the-pagan-music-list-2

The band Laboratorium Pieśni can attest to the fact that local and indigenous culture is becoming more and more popular in the globalized world. Let the question of quantity not be an indicator of their quality, but the fact that the Facebook group is followed by over 80,000 people is telling and shows that such music arouses interest. Their white voice is interesting and very eloquent in the 21st century. Thanks to this, the eight-member band also serve as anthropologists who, traveling around various corners, bring various traditional songs into the workshop to present them in their own polyphonic interpretations.
Laboratorium Pieśni draws a vocal map of Central and Eastern Europe (Belarus, Poland, Ukraine), and also the Balkans, Georgia and Scandinavia. It seems that there are no limits, and the singers' heads are full of ideas and enthusiasm for finding songs from different cultures. Many of the songs are sung a capella, but some of them gain accompaniment in the form of subtly introduced shamanic drums, bells or percussions. Thanks to this, the vocals gain a multidimensional character and space. At the same time, they do not obscure the content, on which you can fully concentrate thanks to the simplicity prevailing here. "Rosna", the long-awaited album, collects all these interests on one release. It shows the band in more mystical songs, those taken straight from indigenous villages, but also more lively songs, such as the Finnish "Käppee", which breaks with its Slavic origin. Girls often choose love topics for the workshop, devoted to interpersonal relationships - the album comes with lyrics with translations, thanks to which the songs are more communicative and understandable. But even if we don't decipher them during the first listening, the music still sounds mysterious, shamanic and blunt. In the era of post-produced recordings and sound-packed tracks, such clean vocals, devoid of effects, are perfect hygiene for the ear, because they remind us that something seemingly simple can be complex and multi-threaded at the same time.  Translated from: http://noweidzieodmorza.com/pl/9212-laboratorium-piesni-rosna/

Gothic Voices - Verbum Patris Umanatur

 #Gothic Voices #medieval music #early music #Renaissance music #vocal group #Gregorian chant #a capella #ars nova #ars antiqua

A Feather on the Breath of God… This wonderfully evocative phrase of Abbess Hildegard of Bingen – chosen as the title of Gothic Voices’ groundbreaking and award-winning first recording – is a fine description of the sound world that the ensemble inhabits. For more than thirty years Gothic Voices has been world-renowned for the excellence, refinement and spirituality of its performances of medieval music and has appeared throughout Europe and in the Americas. Originally founded in 1980 by the scholar and musician Christopher Page, Gothic Voices has gone on to record twenty-three CDs for the Hyperion and Avie labels, three of which won the coveted Gramophone Magazine Early Music Award. Gothic Voices is committed to bringing medieval music into the mainstream. Their imaginative programmes use their voices in varying combinations to produce authoritative performances of great beauty which have won the appreciation of audiences all over the world. The ensemble also enjoys performing contemporary music, particularly pieces with medieval associations. Many of today’s composers are influenced by the medieval repertoire and its often experimental nature. Gothic Voices plans to give a renewed emphasis to the combination of old and new alongside its more traditional programmes.  From: https://gothicvoices.co.uk/biography/

Some aspects of being human must be "transhistorical," according to Christopher Page; sustained exposure to the music of the past opens a window onto how past humans experienced that music. Page has devoted a prolific corner of his life to using music to bridge the historical gap between human beings: Gothic Voices, the vocal ensemble he has directed since its founding in 1980. The group, clearly one of the world's leaders in the performance of medieval music, gives concerts quite frequently in England, as well as continental Europe, America, and Canada; their close relationship with Hyperion Records has resulted in nearly twenty critically-acclaimed recordings. Spanning musics from Hildegard of Bingen to the turn of the sixteenth century, they consistently present music of outstanding quality, with the highest standards of performance. Their vocal sound is a conscious blend of "scrupulously accurate" tuning, sensitive phrasing, careful rhythmic articulation, and a bright and clear vocal production.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/gothic-voices-mn0000501365/biography

Laboratorium Piesni - U Lisi

 #Laboratorium Piesni #world music #folk music #European folk #Eastern European folk #ethnic #traditional #polyphonic chant #Slavic folk music #a capella #white voice #Polish

Laboratorium Pieśni (Song Laboratory) is a group of female singers from Poland, created in 2013. Using traditional, polyphonic singing they perform songs from all over the world: Ukraine, Balkans, Poland, Belarus, Georgia, Scandinavia and many other places. They sing a capella as well as with shaman drums and other ethnic instruments (shruti box, kalimba, flute, gong, zaphir and koshi chimes, singing bowls, rattles etc.), creating a new space in a traditional song, adding voice improvisations, inspired by sounds of nature, often intuitive, wild and feminine.  From: http://laboratoriumpiesni.pl/en/about/

There is a song that is always waiting for you. It reminds you of the simplest things. Open your heart, expand your understanding, open yourself to the primal memory of who you really are. You are the song and the song is you. Take a deep breath and release it. It will become a wild river that will fill your life, taking you to the source. This song is your life.
Our Tribe! We invite you to the world of our newest album “Hé Oyáte”, filled with polyphonic traditional songs of different cultures, as well as original intuitive compositions in dreamed up words, melodies and stories, in the rhythm of shamanic drums, nature sounds and Earth’s pulse.  From: https://laboratoriumpiesni.bandcamp.com/album/h-oy-te-2

Laboratorium Piesni - Karanfilce Devojce

 #Laboratorium Piesni #world music #European folk #Eastern European folk #ethnic #traditional #polyphony #polyphonic chant #Slavic folk music #a capella #white voice #Polish #music video

Laboratorium Pieśni (Song Laboratory) is a group of female singers from Poland, created in 2013. Using traditional, polyphonic singing they perform songs from all over the world: Ukraine, Balkans, Poland, Belarus, Georgia, Scandinavia and many other places. They sing a capella as well as with shaman drums and other ethnic instruments (shruti box, kalimba, flute, gong, zaphir and koshi chimes, singing bowls, rattles etc.), creating a new space in a traditional song, adding voice improvisations, inspired by sounds of nature, often intuitive, wild and feminine.  From: http://laboratoriumpiesni.pl/en/about/

Mediaeval Baebes - Scarborough Fayre

 #Mediaeval Baebes #medieval music #classical crossover #European folk #ethnic fusion #choral music #vocal music #traditional #a capella 

Mediaeval Baebes is an all-female ensemble from the UK, known in the international media as much for how they dress as for their music. The group originated on a lark and grew quickly, as friends invited friends to sing with the ensemble. Soon after recording a demo, Mediaeval Baebes was signed to Virgin, where the group became the fastest selling act on the label, second only to the Spice Girls. Their vocal musical style, steeped in ancient traditions, has topped the charts. The group was originally founded by Katharine Blake and Dorothy Carter in 1996 as an a cappella vocal group. Blake, a British classically trained musician who has worked with Michael Nyman and Nick Cave among others, said she founded the Mediaeval Baebes "just for fun." Her idea was to gather women friends to sing a few medieval songs at informal gatherings. While traveling in Germany she met Carter, who played hurdy-gurdy and dulcimer, and who eventually composed music for the group. Carter's talent for playing hurdy-gurdy, zither, and dulcimer inspired Blake to begin exploring ancient music, and she recruited other friends to join in the project. "Twelve was as many people as you could fit into Katharine's sitting-room," group member Ruth Galloway told the Independent in a 1998 interview. When the group was formed in 1996, there were 12 members plus Carter. In addition to Blake and Carter, there were Teresa Casella, who was in the band Miranda Sex Garden with Blake; Audrey Evans; comic writer Marie Findley; Nichole Frobusch; and Ruth Galloway. Members held various day jobs, from actor to computer programmer to clothing and jewelry designer.  From: https://www.encyclopedia.com/education/news-wires-white-papers-and-books/mediaeval-baebes