It is not easy to catch Janusz Prusinowski in the same place for several days. Apart from his activities as a cultural promoter, leading the All the Mazurkas of the World Festival, with its several editions every year, he and his Kompania are one of the most demanded artists in Europe in the field of heritage music and dance.
It had to come a global pandemic to make him stay in his native land of Mława enough time, in this exceptional situation, to record a series of 13 video workshops, dedicated to several village masters. In the videos, Janusz explains the basics about their playing, also supported by historic recordings made by Andrzej Bieńkowski, for the archive of the foundation Muzyka Odnaleziona.
“In the Net of Mazurek” starts on Friday 17th of July, in this strange Summer of 2020. The videos will be published at 19h at this Youtube Channel. Each of the recorded videos will have a in real time online meeting some days after, with the registered pupils.
Janusz has devoted his life to learn and disseminate the work of those masters. He incarnates with his music all that knowledge, nuances, expresivity, unique to the rawest Polish peasant music. The result is a mind-blowing music, very distinctive and of a unbridled beauty, made with fiddle and with some local versions of other instruments, like the harmonia polska (accordion), cymbałe (psaltery), the drum baraban, the frame drum bębenek, a kind of “cello” used for rhythm and drone called basy. And, of course, the human voice.
Let’s let Janusz explain what is all this about:
The first video will be released on Friday 17th and the protagonist will be the fiddler Jan Lewandowski and his mazurek. On Mondays and Fridays there will be an online meeting in real time, at 19h, with the registered pupils. The details for the registrations are in the FB page and for any question, the person in charge is Ms. Joanna and her email is wsiecimazurka@gmail.com.
The materials produced for this project will stay available in Youtube after. The project is funded by the National Centre for Culture under the programme Kultura w sieci.
