words by Lauren Lim
photos by Boguslaw Chyla

I started grinning the moment the violin started. I think I was a little shocked - oh, this is the music you came here to play? and I couldn’t stop grinning, not for the next hour and half, not even during the intermission. My face hurt.

Čači Vorba is a folk group based in Lublin, Poland, and composed of five musicians, a plethora of string instruments, and an accordion. With their dark clothing—all browns, beiges, and blacks—they melted into the background of the barn, where they were performing to a crowd of babcias (Polish grandmamas), families from Teremiski and its neighboring villages, and also the students of Common University and the actors who had come for Spotkanie Teatralne, the Theater Meeting held by the university.

Before, between, and even after the concert, the musicians kept a bit to themselves, a little lost without their instruments. Earlier, I had introduced myself and Marysia Natanson, the lead vocalist and violinist, exclaimed, in Polish, “Oh God! She speaks English!” and that was the end of that. But when they played, there was no separation between performers and audience.

Čači Vorba plays Gypsy music and Eastern European folk songs in what they like to call “the Gypsy manner.” Playing in the Gypsy manner means playing from the heart, with unquenchable spirit. To Piotr Majczyna (guitar, hurdy-gurdy, Hungarian viola, and mandolin) this means playing in a way completely different from what he was taught in music school. He described his experience there as “very boring, very repetitive, no place for happiness of playing, no place even for passion, nor for any emotions—sometimes I think this was not for developing your musical fascinations but to kill them and make life more gray.”

Evidently, Marysia agreed with this analysis. She chose not to complete music school, where only classical music was taken seriously and folk music was derided as “simple” and “out-of-tune.” Instead, at age sixteen, she left home for the Carpathian mountains, where she lived, trained, and played with local folk musicians for three years. In this time, she lived with a Gypsy family for six months and learned their music and their Roma dialect.

After the concert, Ela Rojek, an eminent Polish alternative actress, remarked to me, “Marysia’s the worst example for any aspiring musician. She quit school and ran off into the mountains to live with the Gypsies; she drinks and smokes and curses.” Ela then laughed, saying “And she’s the best vocalist in Poland.” I was happy to hear this: it made me feel a little less crazy. It somewhat explained my strange urge, during the concert, to find a way to crawl inside Marysia’s voice and stay there forever.  Read More...