The group was founded in 1997. Its repertoire comprises avant-garde interpretations of traditional music from the Mazovia region in central Poland, Chopin’s beloved land. While remaining faithful to the centuries-old techniques of performance and singing the group has forged its own, innovative style whose avant-garde sound has won it enormous popular acclaim. Members of Warsaw Village Band have been successful in producing a ‘modern’ sound on such instruments as the violin, dulcimer and ‘baraban’ (big drum). Moreover, they do not shun blending these traditional instruments with DJs.
The group has won numerous awards at folk festivals in Poland and abroad, such as the ‘Open Stage’ Mikołajki Folkowe (1997) and the ‘New Tradition’ Polish Radio Festival (1998, Second Prize and an Audience Award). Their debut CD ‘Hop Sa Sa’, recorded live in the Polish Radio Studio, was produced by Włodzimierz Kleszcz, who earlier scored an international success with ‘Twinkle Inna Polish Style’ by Trebunie-Tutki (produced jointly with Adrian Sherwood). It was voted the ‘Best Folk Recording’ of 1998 by Polish Radio 3 listeners.
In 2001 the Warsaw Village Band came up with the CD ‘Wiosna Ludu’, later re-issued by the prestigious ethno/world music label ‘Jaro’ in Germany and by ‘Harmonia Mundi/World Village’ in the United States. In 2003 the CD won the Grand Prix of the European Broadcasting Union EBU at the International Competition of Folk Music Recordings.
In 2004 the group received Radio BBC 3’s Award for World Music in the ‘Newcomer’ category.
January 2005 saw the release of the Warsaw Village Band’s third CD entitled ‘Wykorzenienie’. It had its premiere in all the European Union countries, the United States, Canada and Japan, during the group’s worldwide tour. The German weekly ‘Stereo’ named ‘Wykorzenienie’ one of the three best CDs of the years in the ‘Foreign Music’ category.
In 2006 the same CD won the group the ‘Fryderyk’ Award of the Polish recording industry in the ‘Best Folk/Ethno Recording’ category and was among the ten albums nominated for a Grammy in the United States.
The Warsaw Village Band has worked closely with Jack Wall, a California-based composer, for whom the group recorded music for the best-selling computer game ‘Myst IV’. Polish musicians have been joined in the project by none other than Peter Gabriel, the mentor of world music.
The group has also taken part in recording the soundtrack to a Japanese manga, a highly popular art form consisting of comics and print cartoons.
In 2008 the group released a CD with remixed music (‘Wymixowanie’), contributed music to a theatre performance with texts by Tymon Tymański (‘Muzykanty Wielkiego Pola’ directed by Cezi Studniak) at Capitol Theatre in Wrocław, and recorded its fourth studio album ‘Infinity’ (world premiere in November 2008, Polish premiere January 2009).
At the beginning of 2009 the Warsaw Village Band received its second ‘Fryderyk’ (for ‘Wymixowanie’ – the Best Folk Album of 2008). 2009 also saw the group’s successive tour of the United States to promote ‘Infinity’. At the start of 2010, the prestigious internet portal ‘Popmatters’ named it the Best Album of 2009 in the ‘World Music’ category and gave it the 36th place in the list of all music productions of the year.
In April 2010 the album ‘Infinity’ won the title of the Folk Phonogramme of the Year and the ‘Fryderyk’ Award for the Folk/World Music Album (the group’s third ‘Fryderyk’ to date).
In addition to its recordings, the Warsaw Village Band has given hundreds of public gigs, mostly on foreign tours which have taken it to over 30 countries in four continents, from Osaka, Tokyo and Taipei, through Moscow, Paris, Lisbon, Algiers to New York, Toronto, Chicago, Seattle, Los Angeles and Vancouver.
It has performed in theatres, concert halls and clubs, at festivals, in front of thousands of fans and for small audiences.
