Ethnic Folk Music Archive from Poland & Eastern Europe - The Days of the Polish Accordion: The First Accordionists
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In the early 1920's accordions of specific construction, similar to concertinas, started to be built in Central Poland. Village musicians called that instrument "harmonia" and loved very much.
Music Lost/Found The Days of the Polish Accordion: The First Accordionists * Ethnic folk music archive from Eastern Europe (Poland) Recordings from Andrzej Bienkowski's archives from years 1981-1995 www.musiclostfound.com
Label: Muzyka Odnaleziona, Poland (2007) Catalogue No: 002 Format: Book with CD Book: 40 pages, size 15 X 14 cm (5.5" x 5.9"), hard cover binding, in Polish language, many photos with detailed description. CD: 28 tracks, total time 71 min
The Days of the Polish Accordion: The First Accordionists
Poland, 1935. Within a few years Polish accordion had replaced the fiddle to become the most important instrument at rural weddings: shocking, to say the least! Accordionists could barely keep up with the demand. Couples were often prepared to put back their weddings to ensure they got a band with a accordionist.
The book, which contains archive and recording session photographs, discusses these maestros – the first accordionists – and their music can be found on the accompanying CD. Recorded between 1981 and 1995.
* In the early twenties accordions of specific construction, similar to accordions, started to be built in Central Poland. Village musicians called that instrument "harmonia" and loved very much.
Andrzej Bienkowski
Program:
1. Mazurka - From this side to the other / Jan Michalski - 2-row accordion, 22-basses "F. Meier", Waclaw Rek - fiddle, Józef Michalski - baraban drum with cymbal (Klwów 1988)
2. The story by Jan Michalski - the advent of accordion / Jan Michalski - voice
3. Cross / Jan Michalski - accordion, Józef Michalski - baraban drum (Klwów 1988)
4. Oberek / Jan Michalski - accordion, Józef Michalski - baraban drum (Klwów 1983)
14. Mazurka - I stand on the corner of my hut / Józef Bebenek - pedal accordion pedałowa 3-row 80-basses "Ostrowski", Wladyslaw Cieslik - fiddle, Stanislaw Cieloch - tambourine (Cukrówka 1986)
15. Weeding March / Józef Bebenek - accordion, Wladyslaw Cieslik - fiddle, Stanislaw Cieloch - tambourine (Cukrówka 1986)
25. Endless Ober - Here goes the cloud from Radom / Stanislaw Wlazlo - pedal accordion, Stefan Jarosinski - fiddle, Marian Pelka - tambourine (Kłudno 1987)
26. Polka / Jan Kedzierski - 3-row accordion, 120-basses "Ziemski", Józef Papis - fiddle, Józef Kedzierski - baraban drum with cymbal (Rdzuchów 1988)
27. Endless Ober / Jan Kedzierski - accordion, Józef Papis - fiddle, Józef Kedzierski - baraban drum (Rdzuchów 1988)
28. Endless Ober / Jan Kedzierski - accordion, Józef Papis - fiddle, Józef Kedzierski - baraban drum (Rdzuchów 1988)
About Music Lost/Found Series
Poland, 1980, and Communism is facing collapse. Petrol is being rationed, the shops are empty. I begin my journey through the countryside to record music. It’s strange, because there are a great many folk bands, but their services are no longer required in the villages or towns. Musicians stop playing and sell off their instruments; slowly but surely they are forgotten. The first difficulty we faced was finding them replacement instruments. I met musicians who hadn’t seen each other in years, having once played weddings together regularly; this was the last generation of village musicians. Then came the dawn of the pop era. We filmed and made unique music recordings in the musicians’ homes, which were natural, stress-free environments. We searched throughout Poland, Ukraine and Belarus and found 1500 musicians, as well as singers, and from this number we reconstructed eighty bands. Our archive contains recordings of some of the oldest village bands, as well as contemporary wedding music. We have thousands of field photographs. However, the real jewels in our collection are undoubtedly the photographs taken by the original village photographers, who faithfully captured weddings, parties, funerals and daily life.
Andrzej Bienkowski
Andrzej Bienkowski is a painter, ethnographer, writer and professor at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts. For the last thirty years he has traversed rural Poland to document and record the music of village fiddlers, accordionists and singers. He has produced many books and films about rural Polish music, including the Music Lost & Found series. He owns the largest private collection of rural music in Poland.
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