Vołosi (Poland)
The rhythmic crunch of gravel underfoot with each confident step, the rustling of vegetation that you brush against where a winding mountain path takes you across a meadow, the sound of wind caressing the massive slopes. This is the soundscape experienced by a hiker who may be heading for an abandoned manor house in the Carpathians, where Vołosi are recording their latest album.
The wanderer ventures into the garden and then smoothly crosses the threshold of the house, their senses becoming immersed in a music which, detached from time and space, tells us a lot about one and the other. Improvised, the music sets its own rules, defies simple categorizations, but its identity cannot be mistaken, stemming from the encounter between the elemental nature of the Silesian Beskids and the ethereality of classical music.
The Vołosi string quintet navigate the borderlines of musical worlds while avoiding obvious associations. The artists brilliantly combine the language of folk and classical music, also drawing inspiration from rock, Balkan and Middle Eastern traditions to tell their story about the world, time, form and space.
Text by Dr. Łukasz Smoluch - ethnomusicologist from Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań.
