The Polish Edith Piaf: A Love Letter to Ewa Demarczyk
In all honesty, the title of this article is shameless clickbait. Polish singer Ewa Demarczyk didn’t really resemble Edith Piaf at all, although there were attempts to make a Piaf out of her: a French-style, retro singing diva, entertaining and vivid like a sparkling champagne. Demarczyk’s aura was different, more tragic and not frivolous at all. But for many people she remains the undisputed queen of a Polish song, somehow capturing the essence of our poetry, sensitivity and attitude, just like Edith Piaf did for the French.
If I was to summarise the artistic phenomenon that was Ewa Demarczyk in one phrase, it would be ‘quality over quantity’. She recorded only three studio records and her career was relatively short. Born in 1941, she debuted in 1963, winning a local festival in Kraków and, just one year later, the extremely popular National Festival of Polish Song in Opole. Her most acclaimed songs were recorded on the album Ewa Demarczyk śpiewa piosenki Zygmunta Koniecznego (Ewa Demarczyk Sings Zygmunt Konieczny’s Songs) in 1967.
The last decades of her life were difficult. Her art didn’t fit in to the noisy world of pop celebrities, and Demarczyk rejected the very idea of sharing her private life with the public. She had fewer and fewer concerts, and had disappeared completely by 1999.
Still, half a century later, many people consider her to be the best Polish singer ever. Her specialty was sung poetry. She interpreted the poems of Julian Tuwim, Miron Białoszewski and Krzysztof Kamil Baczyński, as well as some by German language poets, such as Goethe and Rilke. Her main assets were her perfect diction and the gift of expressing intimate emotions. It may be a cliché that artists bare their souls, but in Demarczyk’s case it was plainly true. If I ever needed to show a foreigner the lost beauty of the Polish language, I would play them some of Demarczyk’s songs.
She was an actress, too, even though she rejected offers from various directors, including Andrzej Wajda (!) and sang in only one movie, Jerzy Skolimowski's Barrier. She was known as the 'Black Angel' (from the lyrics of one of her songs). From the stage, she stared out at the horizon, hypnotising audiences, unsettling and fascinating listeners. Her facial expression was always so intense, sincere and frugal, she resembled a queen from some ancient tragedy. This artistic sincerity cost her dearly – even though she didn’t dance, each performance drained her so much, she would lose two kilo after each show. Some say the range of her voice was not outstanding. Perhaps, but she was capable of transmitting such an incredibly wide range of emotions! As Demarczyk herself put it: ‘I travel across emotions and moods all the time, across my feelings’.
And yet, when Demarczyk stepped on the stage for the very first time, not everybody was pleased. Czesław Miłosz, the Nobel Prize-winning poet, complained about sentimentalism of her poetic interpretations. Before Demarczyk, nobody had approached Poland’s classic poetry in this way, no one had dared. Perhaps that’s why Miłosz was unhappy about her performance, holy verses were somehow altered, shadowed by Ewa’s expression and voice. It’s worth mentioning, that she didn’t actually sing any of his poems, though.
In today’s pop music, emotions and melodies repeat, crafted skillfully yet soullessly, in order to appeal to the broadest audience. It’s like we listen to same bad song over and over again… The range of emotion is as flat as the range of accessible melodies. With Demarczyk, the listener discovers feelings, new and old, forgotten in the busyness of our own lives. For example, the melancholic Tomaszów, with words by the great Polish poet Julian Tuwim and the subtle accompaniment of just the violin and guitar. This song expresses an intimacy of love that is gone… and our longing and futile attempts to bring it back… one last time.
Text
My darling, how about visiting
Tomaszów, just for a day?
Maybe the same, September silence
Still lingers in golden twilight?
And only one salty drop
flows from bright eyes to my lips.
Still, you’ re not answering me
and you just eat muscat grapes...
Her most memorable songs from the early sixties were recorded in collaboration with the composer Zygmunt Konieczny from the famous Kraków music theater and artistic group Piwnica pod Baranami. Their collaboration, unfortunately short, resulted in some amazing songs, in which the music supported the poetry and vice versa, in an almost synergetic manner.
Konieczny’s music isn’t gentle. The whole genre of sung poetry is often accursed by kitsch and sentimental sweetness. But, then again, listening to Demarczyk is not comforting at all. Her music created a niche of music which both touches and scares, like her apocalyptic, haunting song Taki Pejzaż (Such a Landscape) with lyrics by Andrzej Schmidt, about approaching doom. The emotions transmitted by this song are extremely intense. Much more than in the Polish rock ’n’ roll of her era. It’s more like Billie Holiday singing Strange Fruit, or Johnny Cash’s performance of Hurt. There is a feeling of something mystical but it’s as scary as seeing shadow of God in the burning bush, or in a drowned city.
The War Songs with lyrics by Krzysztof Kamil Baczyński, a talented young poet, who was killed in the Warsaw Uprising, is perhaps one of Demarczyk’s most powerful songs. In her interpretation, this visionary, anti-war song became a manifesto of hope, life and healing.
Text
Just pull out the painful glass
from my eyes, the image of days
that are tumbling white skulls
through burning meadows of blood.
Just turn around crippled time,
cover the graves with the cloak of the river
and clear the battle dust from your hair
the dust of those ireful years
the black dust.
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Ewa Demarczyk at the International Song Festival in Sopot, 1970, photo: Aleksander Jarosiński / Forum
In the year 1964, a young Ewa Demarczyk was invited to perform at the legendary French concert hall Olympia, by its owner Bruno Coquatrix. Most artists would give their life for such a proposal. The chance of international carrier was extremely rare and, surprisingly enough, communist officials in Poland supported the idea, flattered by the prospect of creating a world famous Polish diva. But Demarczyk was focussed on herself. She wanted to finish art school first. She went to France two years later for a tour but refused to stay longer for a two year contract. The official reason was that she didn’t want to sing in French. Legend has it, that Coquatrix begged her on his knees to help him breathe new life into French song. He offered working with the same renowned musicians who had played with Edith Piaf.
The French chapter of Demarczyk’s carrier is interesting, because it shows how the artistic market works – and it became stronger and more pervasive with time. For Demarczyk, her art – the quality and importance of which only she could judge – was most important. And the French just missed the whole point. As she said later, Coquatrix wanted to use her ‘natural talents’, the sheer, raw power of her young voice and diction, to produce a new Edith Piaf, completely ignoring the fact that her sensitivity and talent was different. I’m not an expert on Piaf, but she seemed to really love life. Her credo was ‘I don’t regret anything’, while Demarczyk was filled with melancholy, nostalgia and sadness. She didn’t fit the bill of entertaining, frivolous and cabaret-style. The French didn’t let her sound like her. Instead, they wanted to just use her voice. In Ewa Demarczyk’s own words: ‘But I knew I had something to say. And I'm not for sale’. She had guts. And she knew her own worth and her purpose.
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A 10th anniversary performance of the Piwnica Pod Baranami cabaret at the Potocki Palace (Pod Baranami Palace), Kraków, 1966; pictured: Ewa Demarczyk (front & center), Piotr Skrzynecki, Krystyna Zachwatowicz, Mieczysław Święcicki, Krzysztof Litwin, Tadeusz Kwinta, photo: Henryk Makarewicz / PAP
The popularity of sung poetry in communist-era Poland is a historical phenomenon. Trapped behind the Iron Curtain, Poland was mostly isolated from global trends. Strangely, isolation can sometimes do good for local culture. For example, Japan developed its most unique forms of art, such as traditional ukiyo-e graphics, Kabuki theatre and dance, during its isolation in the Tokugawa period. One has to admit, that communist Poland, grey and poor, gave birth to truly impressive art. Perhaps it was because of the forced ascetic of the era? Or the lack of consumer culture?
Or perhaps, it was due to government support. Artists didn’t have to appeal to the tastes of the masses, so they dared to experiment. But the audience was different too. Television, cabaret and music were all full of literary references. Some say, that this was unnatural and fake, that the mass audience was forced to alter its ‘natural’ tastes. The question then arises, is such a forced education worse than tastes created by the mass media resulting in ignorance, brutality and populism?
After ‘rejoining the free world’, Polish audiences fell in love with American pop culture and its own traditions were largely abandoned. The change was rapid and brutal. Demarczyk‘s poetic songs suddenly became too difficult, demanding and anachronic. In one of her last interviews, in 1998, she expressed her shock at why young people couldn’t read – and comprehend – the best Polish literature and poetry anymore, and relied on cheap summaries instead.
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Ewa Demarczyk & Piotr Skrzynecki, 1966, Planty, Kraków, photo: Tadeusz Rolke / AG
In the 1970s, Demarczyk and the composer Zygmunt Konieczny parted ways. Nobody really knows why, as Demarczyk refused to speak about it. She did say that she didn’t like her most famous album Ewa Demarczyk Sings Zygmunt Konieczny’s Songs because ‘they made her voice sound too dark’. Maybe Konieczny pressured Demarczyk and their artistic visions differed? That’s just me guessing. The reason for their split still remains a secret and we can only guess… and mourn. She began working with Andrzej Zarycki, whose music, although subtle and fine, was less unique than that of his predecessor.
Demarczyk successfully toured the world, including Australia and Japan. She performed at Queen Elizabeth Hall in London in front of a full with audience. She also played at the UNESCO concert in Geneva, as the only artist from Poland. She sang in Polish, later adding German, French and Spanish songs, too. But even with her Polish lyrics, the language barrier was never an obstacle. Audiences felt the intensity and conviction of her art. An American journalist wrote: ‘These are songs which shake the hell out of you, whether you understand the words or not’.
Eventually, she broadened her repertoire by adding foreign poets. When touring in the Soviet Union, she dared to perform songs by Osip Mandelstam, a legendary poet from Acmeist school of poetry, who died in a prison camp, prosecuted because of his work. His poems were strictly forbidden by Soviet officials. For just owning Mandelstam’s books you could end up in prison, or on a long winter holiday in a Gulag. The song about the Jewish violinist Herzovitz, who tries to prevail in dark times, was a metaphor of a totalitarian system crushing the individual. Demarczyk knew that and sang his poem anyway.
The audiences were excited to read those illegal words, showed on screen as part of the concert’s programme. Some even used flashlights to read them. It was a dangerous thing to do and Demarczyk was either very brave, very confident, or both. And people were so grateful for her performance. In 1975, she released an album in the Soviet Union called Ewa Demarczyk – it sold 17 million copies.
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Ewa Demarczyk performing during the 10th anniversary of the Piwnica Pod Baranami cabaret, 1966, photo: Lucjan Fogiel / Forum
Her last concert took place in 1999. After that, Ewa Demarczyk was silent for decades. We can only speculate about why she disappeared. Some say, she was losing her voice and she knew her time was up. Knowing that the quality of her work was crucial for Demarczyk, that seems like a sensible explanation. There was no reunion and no sudden comeback.
Some say, that she grew bitter and was disappointed with people. There was one unpublished interview with Ewa Demarczyk, in which the journalist left a sidenote: ‘The people had let me down’. But it’s important to remember she was no misanthrope, or arrogant snob, who cared only about her art and legacy. Ewa Demarczyk had the reputation of being a very kind and generous soul. She helped and supported many people, and her mother who was a talented tailor made costumes for her theatre friends. She also fed actual starving artists home-made food.
Unfortunately, these acts of kindness didn’t result in good karma. Demarczyk’s career was brutally interrupted in the 1990s, when she lost her state supported theatre. After the fall of communism, the Catholic Church regained many of its properties, thus evicting state run hospitals, public schools and theatres. She lost her second building too, when, allegedly, pre-war owners appeared and wanted their property back. Demarczyk, however, was convinced the ‘owners’ were crooks, supported by a shady ‘detective agency’ and city officials. Many years later, some of the officials were, in fact, sentenced for bribery and corruption. Nobody cared that Ewa Demarczyk was a living Polish cultural icon. As she once said, ‘the wonderful city of Kraków begins to support its artists, only after they’re dead’.
Perhaps it’s our national vice. We, Poles, have always adored stone monuments – especially those of deceased heroes – much more, than any living person. Perhaps it was an act of envy. The pleasure of punishing somebody that dared to be colourful, famous and special.
After the loss of her beloved theatre, Ewa Demarczyk disappeared from concerts and public life. Performaning was everything to her, but as she sang in one of her songs ‘seemingly, one can live without air’.
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Ewa Demarczyk, Kraków, 15 February 1962, photo: Wojciech Plewiński / Forum
A striking aspect of Demarczyk‘s personality was her fierce discretion – almost secrecy – and pride. Opposite to modern celebrities, who share every detail of their lives with the public, Ewa Demarczyk never shared anything about her life with the media. She had a reputation of being difficult to work with, a staunch perfectionist and demanding of fellow artists. Some even say she was arrogant. Perhaps, this was because she was so private.
Some journalists managed to scrounge up scraps of information. It seems that her private life and marriages were full of trials and tribulations. Her second husband was a criminal. She didn’t believe it but was forced to change her mind after seeing her own brooch worn by a café owner, who said she had bought it from Demarczyk’s husband. Proof of blindness, perhaps but also proof of love, devotion and trust.
In her last interview in 1998, for which she had agreed to only in order to fight for her theatre – the journalist tried to find out, why she always hid from the public. Why she didn’t let the people love her? Why didn’t she adapt to life in the limelight? Demarczyk’s answers were firm: ‘I don’t believe in art for art’s sake,’ she said.
Text
My audience is everything to me. But I need to keep my privacy, too, it’s crucial. I communicate with the audience through my art with all the sincerity and skill I‘ve got. Do you really think that it’s so important that the audience knows what I ate for breakfast?
The funny thing is, that the very same journalist that asked tried to pry into her private life later became a big TV boss. His station imported the first reality shows to Poland, further lowering the nation’s sensitivity and acquired taste even more. The station was also famous for creating and promoting various celebrity pop stars. Most of them not worth even mentioning.
Ewa Demarczyk passed away on 14th August 2020, with an unknown number of recordings still, hopefully, awaiting release.
With love,
Wojciech Zembaty
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