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All the Mazurkas of the World – In circles
Warsaw, April 17-20, 2024
Another edition of All the Mazurkas of the World is coming soon – a spring carnival in the heart of Warsaw, a celebration of traditional music, song and dance.
In circles – this is the title of this year’s Festival. It stems from the configuration of people dancing in pairs around the old wedding chamber, the circle of life drawn by the rites of passage and important events, from the Croatian circular dance kolo, the sun’s journey through the sky, and the songs sung “towards the sun”. It also alludes to the peregrinations of Poles from Galicia, economic migrants who left for Croatia and Bosnia during the times of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and returned to the Polish Lower Silesia after World War Two, bringing with them their songs and instruments. This is what this edition of the Festival will be about.
As always, it will be filled with concerts and dance parties, featuring the best rural bands from Poland and beyond, extraordinary musicians and their students. There will also be workshops, activities for kids, and the colorful Instruments Fair. And to top it all off, the Night of Dance – 10 hours of great music, over 20 bands, and a dancing spree till dawn!
The two main concerts of the 2024 Festival are The Peasants. Boryna’s Wedding (April 18) and the Croatian concert Towards the Sun (April 19). The former will be a show inspired by the old wedding traditions of the Łowicz area. The songs and rituals accompanying the wedding as a rite of passage are a reflection of the everyday reality of peasant in the past centuries – a reality which is currently being rediscovered by scholars and which the society is increasingly aware of. In a way, the wedding was its antithesis, a chance to forget the daily struggles of poverty, violence, and humiliation.
The concert, like the album recently released by the Muzyka Zakorzeniona foundation, is also a voice in the debate surrounding the film The Peasants – it aims to reconstruct the actual sounds of the traditional music from Lipce Reymontowskie.
The performers playing and singing at the concert are local masters (Sławomir Czekalski, Jan Szymański and Bogusława Drzewiecka) and a host of young continuators of music from the Łódź region: Kożuch, Napięcie, Róża Grabowska and Joanna Skowrońska.
The concert Towards the Sun will be filled with traditional music from Croatia. The program features songs from various historic eras and different regions of the country, such as Slavonia and Northern Dalmatia, including those found on the UNESCO Lists of Intangible Cultural Heritage (ojkanie, bećarac). Also presented will be newer vocal forms, often performed by young people with a tamburica orchestra and the gajdy bagpipes.
The performers are: KUD “Tomislav” from Donji Andrijevci – a group of 25 older and younger singers and instrumentalists from the Croatian Slavonia; Kapela reemigrancka – students and descendants of remigrants from Ocice, Lower Silesia; Zespół Łada and Donja Jeka – a new Polish-Croatian project.
The concert of Old Tradition competition laureates will open the Festival on Wednesday, April 17. The last day of the Festival, Saturday, April 20 will be filled with the colorful Instrument Fair, including instrument-building presentations, workshops, mini-concerts, and the children-oriented Little Mazurkas. The final event of the Festival and its culmination is a 10-hour-long Dance Night (April 20). At the Warsaw Forteca at Zakroczymska street, dance music will be played by city and rural bands from various regions of Poland and beyond.
From Wednesday till Friday, after each concert you can join the Festival Club and dance till 1 a.m., and participate in workshops from the morning till 5 p.m. – that’s 54 hours of hands-on education in singing, dancing and playing folk instruments.
Festival locations:
Centrum Promocji Kultury Praga Południe, Podskarbińska 2 street, 03-833 Warsaw
The National Ethnographic Museum in Warsaw, Kredytowa 1 street, 00-056 Warsaw
Terminal Kultury Gocław, Jana Nowaka-Jeziorańskiego 24 street, 03-982 Warsaw
Forteca Kręgliccy, Zakroczymska 12 street, 00-225 Warsaw
Organizer: Fundacja Wszystkie Mazurki Świata
Sponsors: Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, the City of Warsaw, Mazovian Voivodeship Self-Government
Partners: Fundacja Muzyka Zakorzeniona, The National Ethnographic Museum in Warsaw, Terminal Kultury Gocław, Centrum Promocji Kultury Praga Południe, Forteca Kręgliccy, Stowarzyszenie Dom Tańca
Media patrons: Polskie Radio Dwójka, Radio Dla Ciebie
Accreditation queries should be sent to: jagnaknittel@gmail.com
In case of any questions, please contact: Jagna Knittel, ph: +48 606 966 337
