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Written in fRoots issue 268, 2005
 

KAPELA ZE WSI WARSZAWA – EARLIER THAN WARSAW VILLAGE BAND
Hopsasa
Jaro JARO 4265-2 (2005)

Sometimes it seems that the trick for getting world-music scene’s attention is to present a strongly characteristic overall sound, with a particularly striking track for airplay, rather than whole-CD variety. Now that the Warsaw Village Band has successfully grabbed ears with the churning wall of raw fiddles and drums of their breakthrough People’s Spring album and subsequent live appearances, it’s time to listen again to their original CD.
      There have been major line-up changes since Wlodzimierz Kleszcz’s Kamahuk label first released Hopsasa in 1998. Lead vocalist then, and on People’s Spring, was fiddler Katarzyna Szurman, while the only original member still in the band by 2004’s Uprooting was percussionist Maciej Szajkowski. But the ingredients that made People’s Spring are all here - abrasive, rhythmic fiddles and hard-edged voices, gutty baraban and frame drums, splashing tinny cymbal, enlarged and enhanced by the bold use of repeat-reverbs. Not as hefty as the breakthrough sound, but Hopsasa is more varied than People’s Spring and rawer than Uprooting, and takes its rightful place alongside them with this Jaro reissue.


© 2005 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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