Projekt.Kolberg

 

In the area of folk culture - so elusive and giving the opportunity to a variety of interpretations, nothing is permanent, obvious or literal. Even what constitutes its foundations. InFidelis duo and a pair of filmmakers treated the monumental documentation of Polish territories folklore, gathered in the nineteenth century by Oskar Kolberg, as a starting point for artistic exploration.

 

Projekt.Kolberg is an interdisciplinary work, as the interests of the main investigator were; he documented not only the music of the Polish countryside, but the whole of its culture: rituals, costumes, art. His work „Lud, jego zwyczaje, sposób życia, mowa, podania, przysłowia, obrzędy, gusła, zabawy, pieśni, muzyka

i tańce” ("The people, its customs, way of life, language, legends, proverbs, rituals, witchcraft, games, songs, music and dances") has 33 volumes published during his lifetime, and the same left in the notes.

 

The film "Kolekcjoner“ (“The Collector"), produced in a very artistic technique of stop-motion animation, is an impression on the searches of the ethnographer. It depicts, in a symbolic way, his wanderings around Polish lanes, after songs and ceremonies. Among the thousands of customs described by Kolberg, "Kolekcjoner" chose a few. "Etnogramy" accompanying the film is an unusual soundtrack, where traditional melodies are played on Polish folk instruments, but in versions that were not dreamt of by our 

ethnographers.

 

The extraordinary double album is a result of the „Młoda Polska” scholarship from the Polish  Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. DVD contains the study film "Kolekcjoner” by Kamila and Mirek 

Sosnowski. CD is filled with "Etnogramy" - variations on the melodies from Kolberg’s album, orchestrated

by InFidelis duo on Biłgoraj suka and Płock fiddle. Titles refer to the names of traditional folk dances (eg. struck, walked, chased).

 

 

Oskar Kolberg

 

His father was German and his mother French; still the love for Polish folk music ran in his blood as his wet-nurse was a peasant women from a small village near Sandomierz. "Nations persist as long as they sing", Oskar Kolberg used to say. He himself dreamed of becoming a composer as his childhood friend Frederick Chopin did. Disappointed with the lack of success, he quickly resigned from that idea. He became an accountant, and the knowledge gained at the conservatories in Warsaw and Berlin he used only when giving piano lessons, and during his excursions to villages, where he was noting down folk tunes he heard. Over time, an innocent hobby turned into a romantic mission to save the culture of the Polish countryside.

 

For over half a century (1839-1890) Kolberg toured the lands that was Poland before its partitions, and with the scrupulousness of an accountant he documented local folklore, with special attention to music.

In the nineteenth century such an approach was a novelty, especially since the sound recording technique was developed only at the end of the century. "Sometimes it happened that I had to almost shorthand the escaping sounds of a violin in a dirty room, with fear for my own life, among suffocating smoke, fumes and bustle, in the crowd gathered and people squeezing me, with almost no light" he wrote in a letter to Ignacy Kraszewski. But then there were times that distrustful peasants took him for ... a spy and once or twice he was even imprisoned!

 

Kolberg was the first who collected and systematized folk culture by region. The work „Lud, jego 

zwyczaje, sposób życia, mowa, podania, przysłowia, obrzędy, gusła, zabawy, pieśni, muzyka i tańce” ("The people, its customs, way of life, language, legends, proverbs, rituals, witchcraft, games, songs, music and dances") has 33 volumes published during his lifetime, and the same amount left in the notes. Projekt Kolberg deals with this heritage very bravely.