Maniucha & Ksawery: Ukrainian Polesian Folk-Jazz Improvisations

Jan 4

ABOUT MANIUCHA & KSAWERY

Maniucha Bikont and Ksawery Wójciński (Maniucha & Ksawery) is a duo that in its own way combines jazz improvisation with dying-off traditional songs from Polissya region in Ukraine. In their compositions, they evoke spring, weddings, love songs, lullabies and put them into stories mapping the cycles of nature and human life. Together they narrate tales from diverse times and musical genres, drawing from Maniucha’s many years of travels to Ukrainian village singers as well as their own mutual musical imagination. Thanks to Polish National Radio Award and support of fans they recorded their first album called OJ BOROM, BOROM... having a premiere in march 2017. Maniucha & Ksawery enjoy performing in cozy intimate spaces (small stages, backyards, countryside barns) as well as acoustically refined concert halls (like the Lutosławski Studio or the Szczecin Filharmonic Hall). During their concerts, they not only sing and play music but also recall the stories and fables connected with their repertoire. As a visual counterpoint, they use multimedia art created and performed live by Painters’ Collective.

OJ BOROM, BOROM... is an attempt to create a multi-layered tale based on archaic songs from western Polissya. Their starting point is traditional songs, stories, fairy tales. Vocal techniques, emotionality of this musical material, but also the memory of situations, people, nature and stories accompanying the songs are the pretext for making music together. The tales are narrated by voice and double-bass side by side as equivalent storytellers. Bass is not only accompanying voice but it tells the stories itself or makes dialogues with songs and stories. Voice and bass become analogical participants of musical action, their parts interpenetrate, balance, exchange. During this process, it turns out that traditional music and improvised music are languages so similar to each other, that they could be local dialects of the same language.