THE FIFTH DAY
The fifth day (June 27) is also the evocation of the border experience. In the festival event we juxtapose different perspectives of seeing the issue of death and dying, and various ways of celebrating the departure: the EASTERN (Eastern Poland and Georgia): community-oriented, based on the power of tradition and means developed by generations, and the WESTERN: undertaking an individual experiment of assisting the process of dying. We will ask questions about our own identity: where are we, which ritual do we feel affinity with, where is the boundary between artistic experiment and transgression, is it possible to create personal rites.
Jarzębina (Kocudza) and Riho Ensemble (Georgia)
On Thursday evening we would like invite you to the unique meeting of the Polish female vocal group Jarzębina from Kocudza and the Georgian Riho Ensemble. We do not intend the two performances to be separate concerts, but a dialogue of two traditions planned specifically for the needs of the festival: a Georgian polyphony from the Svaneti region and Polish monody from Roztocze.
The meeting is going to refer to the forgotten rite of the Empty Nights, which took place in various regions of Poland on the night preceding the burial of the deceased, at a time when – as it was believed – the deceased was no longer “here”, but he did not get “there” yet. We are going to listen to Polish funeral songs – often from the Baroque and earlier times, as well as Svan songs called “Zar” – accompanying the archaic funerary ritual, performed in complex polyphonic variants sometimes two-thousand-year-old – the oldest form of polyphony in Georgia.
Despite the difficult issues, these songs are extremely beautiful, bright, almost soothing and are an excellent example of the power of tradition and community in the face of the most important rites the passage. The encounter of two outstanding vocal ensembles that have not cooperated so far remains in the relationship with the performance of the Markus & Markus group. The schedule composed in such a way will allow searching for links and common points between seemingly opposite perspectives: modernity/tradition, East/West, old/new, individual/collective.
Jarzębina is considered one of the most famous vocal ensembles in Poland. It is a multi-generational female group focused on ritual theatre and traditional singing. It was established in 1991 in Kocudza in Roztocze, an extremely interesting ethnographic region near Lublin, in the eastern part of Poland. The members of the ensemble collect and perform songs of the Podlasie region, near the Bug river and actively participate in the cultural life of the region. The ensemble presents a rich and diverse repertoire of one-voice ceremonial and everyday songs, for which the source is oral tradition, based mainly on family heritage and various types of songbooks: Christmas-carols, pastorals, songs for Advent, Lent and Easter. Songs and dialogues are performed in local dialect, with care for the original tempo, volume and style of artistic expression. Particularly noteworthy are the unique funeral and Lent songs, often from the Baroque era, and even older, from the time when singing accompanied people from birth to death.
The group willingly collaborates with various artists, including projects related to early music, traditional music, as well as feature films and activities in the field of contemporary art (including Schola of the Węgajty Theatre, Warsaw House of Dance, Italian Early Music Ensemble Micrologus, but also Paweł Sala - director of the film " Mother Joanna of the Cats ", Anna Molska or the authors of the musical project "Puls" devoted to the work of Halina Poświatowska and presented at the last Festival of Singing Actors in Wrocław with the participation of trip-hop musicians, Wojciech Waglewski, Monika Brodka and others). Skills of Jarzębina were appreciated, among others by Władysław Hasior or Henryk Mikołaj Górecki. In 2012, the group gained wide popularity, winning the plebiscite for the official song of the Polish football team for Euro 2012.
Riho Ensemble Georgia, Svanetia – Svanetia is a land located in the northwest of Georgia, in the highest inhabited parts of the Caucasus Mountains. It is said that the Svan people lived there when Jason, searching for the Golden Fleece, reached the shores of Colchis. The first written sources on the history of Svan people can be found in texts by Xenophon. The country was remote, situated on the outskirts of Ecumene, inaccessible for centuries, and inhabited by Caucasian highlanders famous for their independence. Thanks to these circumstances, the Svan culture preserved an unusual vocal repertoire, performed constantly at various celebrations and festivals, characterized by raw, archaic sounds and a complicated polyphonic style. Songs, melodies and the way of performing them have been passed down for centuries to succeeding generations in the form of oral tradition.
Riho Ensemble was founded in 1964 by Eptime (Islama) Pilpani – a professional musician and singer who died a year ago, a teacher of traditional Svan music, the senior of the Pilpani family (a musical family famous in Svanetia). The band is currently run by his son - Wachtang Pilpani. The Riho Ensemble consists of the best traditional singers from the vicinity of Mestia, many of whom were related to the founder of the group.
The group's repertoire includes Svan pre-Christian ritual songs, historical/epic songs, praise and folk religious songs and dances, often performed to the accompaniment of traditional, archaic Svan instruments: the three-stringed string instrument chuniri (kemenche) and the eight-string harp changi (çeng).
FILM
THE FIFTH DAY
The fifth day (June 27) is also the evocation of the border experience. In the festival event we juxtapose different perspectives of seeing the issue of death and dying, and various ways of celebrating the departure: the EASTERN (Eastern Poland and Georgia): community-oriented, based on the power of tradition and means developed by generations, and the WESTERN: undertaking an individual experiment of assisting the process of dying. We will ask questions about our own identity: where are we, which ritual do we feel affinity with, where is the boundary between artistic experiment and transgression, is it possible to create personal rites.
Jarzębina (Kocudza) and Riho Ensemble (Georgia)
On Thursday evening we would like invite you to the unique meeting of the Polish female vocal group Jarzębina from Kocudza and the Georgian Riho Ensemble. We do not intend the two performances to be separate concerts, but a dialogue of two traditions planned specifically for the needs of the festival: a Georgian polyphony from the Svaneti region and Polish monody from Roztocze.
The meeting is going to refer to the forgotten rite of the Empty Nights, which took place in various regions of Poland on the night preceding the burial of the deceased, at a time when – as it was believed – the deceased was no longer “here”, but he did not get “there” yet. We are going to listen to Polish funeral songs – often from the Baroque and earlier times, as well as Svan songs called “Zar” – accompanying the archaic funerary ritual, performed in complex polyphonic variants sometimes two-thousand-year-old – the oldest form of polyphony in Georgia.
Despite the difficult issues, these songs are extremely beautiful, bright, almost soothing and are an excellent example of the power of tradition and community in the face of the most important rites the passage. The encounter of two outstanding vocal ensembles that have not cooperated so far remains in the relationship with the performance of the Markus & Markus group. The schedule composed in such a way will allow searching for links and common points between seemingly opposite perspectives: modernity/tradition, East/West, old/new, individual/collective.
Jarzębina is considered one of the most famous vocal ensembles in Poland. It is a multi-generational female group focused on ritual theatre and traditional singing. It was established in 1991 in Kocudza in Roztocze, an extremely interesting ethnographic region near Lublin, in the eastern part of Poland. The members of the ensemble collect and perform songs of the Podlasie region, near the Bug river and actively participate in the cultural life of the region. The ensemble presents a rich and diverse repertoire of one-voice ceremonial and everyday songs, for which the source is oral tradition, based mainly on family heritage and various types of songbooks: Christmas-carols, pastorals, songs for Advent, Lent and Easter. Songs and dialogues are performed in local dialect, with care for the original tempo, volume and style of artistic expression. Particularly noteworthy are the unique funeral and Lent songs, often from the Baroque era, and even older, from the time when singing accompanied people from birth to death.
The group willingly collaborates with various artists, including projects related to early music, traditional music, as well as feature films and activities in the field of contemporary art (including Schola of the Węgajty Theatre, Warsaw House of Dance, Italian Early Music Ensemble Micrologus, but also Paweł Sala - director of the film " Mother Joanna of the Cats ", Anna Molska or the authors of the musical project "Puls" devoted to the work of Halina Poświatowska and presented at the last Festival of Singing Actors in Wrocław with the participation of trip-hop musicians, Wojciech Waglewski, Monika Brodka and others). Skills of Jarzębina were appreciated, among others by Władysław Hasior or Henryk Mikołaj Górecki. In 2012, the group gained wide popularity, winning the plebiscite for the official song of the Polish football team for Euro 2012.
Riho Ensemble Georgia, Svanetia – Svanetia is a land located in the northwest of Georgia, in the highest inhabited parts of the Caucasus Mountains. It is said that the Svan people lived there when Jason, searching for the Golden Fleece, reached the shores of Colchis. The first written sources on the history of Svan people can be found in texts by Xenophon. The country was remote, situated on the outskirts of Ecumene, inaccessible for centuries, and inhabited by Caucasian highlanders famous for their independence. Thanks to these circumstances, the Svan culture preserved an unusual vocal repertoire, performed constantly at various celebrations and festivals, characterized by raw, archaic sounds and a complicated polyphonic style. Songs, melodies and the way of performing them have been passed down for centuries to succeeding generations in the form of oral tradition.
Riho Ensemble was founded in 1964 by Eptime (Islama) Pilpani – a professional musician and singer who died a year ago, a teacher of traditional Svan music, the senior of the Pilpani family (a musical family famous in Svanetia). The band is currently run by his son - Wachtang Pilpani. The Riho Ensemble consists of the best traditional singers from the vicinity of Mestia, many of whom were related to the founder of the group.
The group's repertoire includes Svan pre-Christian ritual songs, historical/epic songs, praise and folk religious songs and dances, often performed to the accompaniment of traditional, archaic Svan instruments: the three-stringed string instrument chuniri (kemenche) and the eight-string harp changi (çeng).
FILM