Polish Music Mash-Up: Dark Electronic Meets Highlander Reggae
The song ‘Do Not Betray Me’ by the Twinkle Brothers and Trebunie-Tutki appeared on Lustmord’s podcast for ‘Secret Thirteen’.
Władysław Trebunia-Tutki was born in 1942 to a family of musicians in the village of Biały Dunajec, near Zakopane, Poland. Although many members of his extended family play music, the core musicians are currently Władysław Trebunia-Tutki (violin and vocals), his son Krzysztof (violin and vocals) and his daughter Anna (bass and vocals). Trebunie-Tutki is the first Polish group that has been repeatedly present on the World Music Charts Europe, created by the European Broadcasting Union.
Around the same time, the brothers Grant – Norman and Ralson – were born in the Jamaican town of Falmouth. In the 1970s, they founded one of the most important bands in the history of reggae, the Twinkle Brothers.
Lustmord, who brought the two bands together in a podcacst for Secret Thirteen, is a sound designer himself, born Brian Williams in the U.K in 1959. His music is described as being among the darkest of the ambient genre.
What brings them together?
Trebunie-Tutki met with Twinkle Brothers in the early 1990s. It was the Polish Radio journalist Włodzimierz Kleszcz, a keen propagator of world music, who came up with the idea of linking the highlander music culture with reggae.
The collaborative album Higher Heights was published in 1993 and very warmly welcomed by fans of folk music around the world, especially in the United Kingdom. The album was recorded in London, where the Twinkle Brothers continue to live and work today.
In an interview with Kasia Paluch, nearly 20 years after the groundbreaking Polish folk album, Krzystof Trebunia said:
Text
Polish listeners in the ’90s were not yet quite prepared for such an experiment; there were very strange impressions along with a lot of positive reviews. Subsequent years have shown that artistically, it was an interesting idea and has inspired many other artists to experiment with music, openness and thinking in a broader way.
It is possible that Brian Williams may have heard of this collaboration during the 1990s. By then, he was already gaining popularity with his albums released under the name Lustmord. Critics define his music as dark ambient, or a combination of ambient music with influences of noise and industrial music – the music was loud but sedate, reminiscent of the soundtrack to horror films. Lustmord is the name behind the music for many blockbuster films, including Underworld and The Crow as well as video games such as Planescape:Torment and Assassin's Creed.
It is also possible that someone might have told Lustmord about the collaboration between Trebunie-Tutki and Twinkle Brothers during his performance in Krakow. This was an event on a global scale – until then, Williams had never presented his music live. The first of his live performances was on 6th June 2006 (6-6-06) at a ceremony organized by the Church of Satan, an American religious group founded by Anton Szandor LaVey in 1966. In 2010, Lustmord’s next live appearance took place at the Unsound Festival in Kraków. Williams returned to Kraków two years later to play once again at Unsound in 2012.
On the occasion of his 55th birthday, Lustmord releases the 76-minute long podcast for Secret Thirteen, which includes a 1993 recording of Do Not Betray Me by the Twinkle Brothers and The Family Band Trebunia for lovers of unique world music.
Originally written in Polish by Filip Lech, edited by EM, Jan 2014
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