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This week it was announced from Kiev that Kateryna Zavoloka will soon support Aphex Twin on stages in Denmark and the UK. A new project from Zavoloka's home label, Kvitnu, has also helped to spread awareness of her catalog, this time in Poland. With the support of the Polish Institute in Kiev, various artists from Kvitnu have now reinterpreted the music of Polish composer Karol Szymanowski (1882-1937). For readers of FFM, that means that we're treated to material from Dunaewsky69, Nikolaienko, Kotra, Zavoloka, V4W.enko, Ujif_Notfound, Alla Zagaykevych, and Andrey Kiritchenko.
An impressive roster, by any standards.
Produced in a limited collectors' edition of 1000 copies, the new CD, entitled "Myths and Masks," celebrates the work of a man born into the Polish gentry a couple of decades before the explosion of revolutionary politics across Eastern Europe. Although his biography runs parallel to Poland's most difficult years in the Twentieth Century, at least from a political standpoint, Szymanowski's music would remain maximally far from civic pragmatism. Propaganda took a back seat to willful apoliticism.
One might argue that he was never suited to the work or worldview of the laboring classes, since he had suffered from ill health even as a boy. Raised on a grand, wealthy estate and physically disadvantaged, he was seen by some as the very embodiment of a fading, failing regime.
Karol Szymanowski
Through an early acquaintance with the work of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, Szymanowski would come to find confidence and strength in art, rather than through policy. In the dying moments of the nineteenth century, he was already inclined to statements such as the following gem, worthy of any card-carrying decadent: "The only aim of art is itself. It reflects both the Absolute and the soul of an individual. Art stands above life: it knows neither limitations nor laws. It can only be denigrated by the inclusion of patriotism, civic instinct, or morality."
Art can only be denigrated by the inclusion of patriotism, civic instinct, or morality
Paganism and hedonism soon loomed large.
The revolutionary violence of 1917 destroyed Szymanowski's family home, estate, and even the surrounding villages. Openly criticizing the idea of proletarian supremacy (and understandably so), he began to travel extensively overseas. When he eventually returned home, he dedicated himself to the cause of education - and to the values of Polish culture amid internationalist dreams of unity. Music continued to offer Szymanowski a higher sense of cohesion and/or coherence than anything politics might produce.
We offer here two of the Kvitnu tracks, specifically the closing compositions from Alla Zagaykevych and Andrey Kiritchenko. The latter of those composers has been covered before on FFM becuse of a long-term interest in the dovetailing of folk and electronic performance, most notably through work with the Ukrainian ensemble Ojra. A couple of weeks ago, in fact, he also published some dub-tinged instrumentals based on antique Cossack chants.
His contribution to the Szymanowski project comes from the very end of the composer's life. Kiritchenko maintains that by this late stage in Szymanowski's biography, he had turned an early passion for Schopenhauer and Nietzsche into a bold conviction that music represents a "transformational path... an 'audio stream' through time, space, and consciousness."
The music becomes a bridge to a prior century
Once again through a melange of modern electronica and traditional song, Kiritchenko claims access to a certain "bridging" process, both historically and geographically. Put differently, folk expression is prior to modern politics - and it shows scant respect for the partitions drawn crudely across field or forest by today's mapmakers. "The music becomes a bridge to a prior century. It joins a dialog of Ukrainian and Polish cultures."
These sweeping, romantic references are extended by Alla Zagaykevych, who is a major force in Ukrainian electronic music. Born in the western Ukrainian town of Khmelnytsky, her initial studies led to time in France where she, like Kiritchenko, invested much effort in researching pre-industrial Slavic music. As any self-respecting ethnographer, she would later join expeditions around Ukraine, gathering songs from hushed, verdant corners of the country. Currently she works in the National Music Academy of Ukraine, specifically the Music Information Technologies’ Department - which she founded herself.
She takes her Szymanowski composition from the time of the First World War: the horrors of military conflict are passed over here in favor of mythical, even timeless narratives. Zagaykevych refers to this thematic constancy (no matter what occurs in the outside world) as a comforting, consoling "shelter designed for various symbols and signs." Greek myths and legends, i.e., tales of that which never happened, speak nonetheless of future magic. In cyclical, elemental forms, full of wind, fire, and fairies, those same mythical references offered Szymanowski a priceless refuge from "goal-driven" enterprise - such as he saw on the battlefields of 1915.
They spoke of possible beauty - instead of likely disaster. They embodied the vaguest hope.
That appeal of vagueness in a time of unpleasant, even fatal determination is reflected in other recordings this week. In the southern Russian town of Samara we find new material from Nasienie (aka Senia Zhupel), whose page at Vkontakte is currently headed by a brief phrase in English: "So it goes." Put differently, the workings of the world have a certain, predetermined pattern to which man is not privy. As a result, actuality and artistic enterprise grow further apart: the former is limited by its own internal logic. The latter remains blissfully free of purpose or objective profit.
Music for introverted mystics, dreamers, and lateral thinkers
That brings us to fresh recordings from Nasienie, released through the US-based netlabel, Webbed Hand. Szymanowski would have approved of the label's manifesto: "In general, the works here are aimed at the ears of introverted mystics, dreamers, and lateral thinkers. We’d like the music to serve as vehicles for the mind." The new Nasienie tracks are entitled "Chasing the Fog," and share the same lack of focus - as the artwork above shows. The compositions come with a single - and singularly imprecise - definition: "Ambient and drone elements, blended with some effected guitar and keyboard sounds."
One of the images employed by Senia Zhupel speaks directly to the decadent aesthetic and timeframe of Szymanowski. Hedonism and solipsism are confused; clarity and common sense are both shown the door - in the name of selfish pleasure.
Knowing that these misty desires have little application in the real world, Mr. Zhupel occasionally falls to a little self-mockery. On one social network, he lists his interests as "hardcore [culture], naked chicks..." and then he adds a swastika. Such, sadly, are the confrontational attitudes one is likely to encounter in mainstream society or entertainment, especially when colored by profit or politics. He also peppers some neighboring pages with images from Oliver Stone's 1994 "Natural Born Killers." His gestures are parodic.
The closing works today come once again from Kiev and Oleg Shpudeiko, who performs as Heinali. On the last occasion we visited his studio, Mr. Shpudeiko was aiming for what he called "a very fresh, soft sound." In that phrase alone, we can hear that a competition of creative and commercial enterprise persists, with the former championing "softness." Hard lines and harsh sounds are left to the marketplace.
Heinali has been experimenting since 2003. As someone with no musical education whatsoever, all of his achievements and web-releases have come as a result of long-term tinkering or trying various sonic avenues. "Experimenting [over the years] and attempting to find his trademark sound, he has produced a wide variety of tracks. Heinali has [by this point] worked in almost every known genre and style - all the way from noise and ambient, to jazz and 'guitar-industrial'..."
Heinali (Oleg Shpudeiko)
He continues: "In late 2007 he started playing live and mixing hip-hop, acid-jazz beats, and old jazz, with soul vocals or dark D&B bass lines. This so-called ‘post-hop’ concept of his was developed over the years in minimal, dubstep or leftfield realms."
Current work comes in the form of collaborations with American poet Matt Finney. The two men are just about to release a joint recording, and advance word has been very positive. One quote in particular stands out from an interview with Finney, in which he expresses his upset at the enduring gap between artistic effort and real-world consequence: "It’s mostly just me feeling like I can’t change all that’s wrong in this world, or make it safe for my family, you know? I’m powerless against all this shit, no matter who I vote for - or how many times I talk about it in a song."
His Ukrainian colleague is smitten with a related sense of disconnect.
Shpudeiko's response, therefore, to his colleague's downbeat outlook is interesting. His current motto on Facebook comes from the screenplay of "Monty Python and the Holy Grail." More precisely, he quotes one moment where a disgruntled aesthete expresses his (ludicrous!) concern at the negative influence of social change upon cultural practice.
The famous quotation begins: "There is a pestilence upon this land, nothing is sacred. Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress in this period in history." King Arthur asks: "Did you say shrubberies?" "Yes," replies our artist: "Shrubberies are my trade. I am a shrubber. My name is Roger the Shrubber. I arrange, design, and sell shrubberies."
Both Senia Zhupel and Heinali give voice to the view that modern social planning, progress, and so forth are closer, in fact, to absurdity. The only fitting response is a grim sense of humor that first inverts the value systems of that same society - through parody - and then finds refuge in the beautiful aimlessness of irrationality. Once more, imprecision appeals more than clear-cut pragmatism.
Maximally distant from war, conflict, and fiscal downturn, these musicians take their initial cue from a Polish composer who managed to counter the horrors of Soviet enterprise with a deliberately "useless" beauty. For one young artist in the town of Samara, that avoidance of pragmatism takes the audio-visual forms of foggy weather; for Heinali, it becomes an overt recourse to absurdity. Logic fades with every step. Music offers these young men and women a sense of "vague," yet universal design that's woefully absent elsewhere.
Better, therefore, to turn one's back on mundane, heartless actuality and, in Kiritchenko's words, "Build a bridge to a prior century."
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