Antonina Nowacka

Born in 1992, Antonina Nowacka is a vocalist and composer with a deep interest in the nature of sound, particularly its effect on the nervous system, as well as the ways that music can put the performer and audience in a specific state of mind.

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Antonina Nowacka, photo: Marcelina Pieniążek

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A graduate of the Academy of Visual Arts in Warsaw, Nowacka is a co-founder of the duo WIDT with her sister Bogumiła Piotrowska, who is responsible for the visual side of the project. In 2015, the band gained notoriety outside avant-garde music circles when the British portal The Quietus placed their self-titled album amongst the best releases of 2015. Writing about WIDT, journalist Aimee Armstrong described their style:

Their music now is wholly singular and exciting. Somehow both pervasive and pretty at the same time, it compounds all the aesthetics and feelings that hi-tech futurist music that the turn of the decade has promised us. [...] Their work is palpable and at moments fragile in spite of its grandeur – revealing vocal cracks and breaks in sound. These sounds are also mirrored in the visuals – which match them with almost eerie ease.

Reviews in the foreign press have led to WIDT performing in Western Europe. In 2016, the duo toured the UK. WIDT also appeared at the KRAAK festival in Brussels and at the Easterndaze x Berlin festival, which turned out to be vital for the band’s future. It was there that Nowacka and Piotrowska performed with Jan Christoph Wolter – a German drum’n’bass and breakbeat producer better known as Christoph De Babalon. In 2018, the result of their collaboration, the avant-garde opera TEYAS, was released. In an interview with the Electronic Beats portal, Wolter recalled his first meeting with the Polish artists:

I immediately liked what Antonina and Bogumiła were doing with WIDT. Very unique stuff. So it was a great idea for us to collaborate on a spontaneous gig, although I normally never do things like that. When we met the first time at the soundcheck, it just felt and sounded right. There was a natural vibe to putting our work together.

How to recreate the Javanese cave

In late 2018 and early 2019, Nowacka went to Indonesia on a six-month scholarship to study traditional music.

For me, perhaps the most compelling feature of this music is the sensitivity to the interplay of instruments and their resonant qualities […]. In a traditional Indonesian orchestra, the entire sense of sound is based on subtle frequencies that only reveal themselves in the presence of others, produced by other instruments. Listening to them individually, I had the impression that they were out of tune. Only when they sounded together a surprising, unique harmony emerged. It’s a bit like a jigsaw puzzle: the whole picture as a unity makes sense only when all the pieces fit together.

During her stay in Java, Nowacka travelled to the foot of the volcanoes. On one of these trips, she found herself in the Saplewan cave. In an interview with Dwutygodnik, Nowacka recalled:

It was a different space-time continuum […]. When I was there, singing or sitting, I did not feel the passing of time. After a few hours I went outside, and suddenly there were many people, but somehow I didn’t meet anyone inside.

The unusual architecture and, above all, the acoustics of the Indonesian caves made Nowacka perform two concerts there. The experience of singing in Seplewan gave birth to the artist’s solo album. Its title, Lamunan, means dreaming in Indonesian.

After returning to Poland, the singer looked for a place to recreate the dreamy, timeless atmosphere of the Javanese caves and their acoustics. Eventually, she found a similar sound in Modlin’s fortress, where she recorded her solo album. Jennifer Lucy Allan wrote about Lamunan for The Quietus:

It is wordless, echoing, ancient music, something brand new and impossibly old. Its simplicity makes it sing – the uncomplicated appeal of hearing one’s own voice echoed by the pre-human shapes of the earth.

Reviews of Nowacka's solo album included references to dream-pop greats from the 4AD label catalogue, opera, the works of Meredith Monk and early music. When asked about the latter, the artist replied:

I love using the old in a new way. Early music appears in descriptions of my works because my vocals may be associated with such old forms of vocalism, but in fact, it inspires me mainly in terms of sound and atmosphere. [...] What I really like about the old sound is the coherence, space and distance.

The Oaxacan churches

Nowacka chose Mexico as the destination for her next journey. Initially, she had planned to record there in caves and at the foot of volcanoes as well, but due to a pandemic, the government closed down all the national parks. For this reason, she decided to explore the churches in the state of Oaxaca, which are famous for their beautiful-sounding organs. Many of them were closed due to the pandemic, but in the town of Mazunte, Nowacka discovered an open and almost unattended church.

Not only did it sound beautiful, but also the sounds of the street poured in through the open doors: motorbikes, trucks and the crowing of the rooster. […] It created an unexpected background for my vocals. I would go there and sing for hours, as no one else would go there.

Encouraged by her sessions at Mazunte, the singer set out to trace the path of other churches in the state of Oaxaca. Some of them she found in a map of historical organs, others she came across by chance. 'I usually travelled by collective taxi or bus, so I also had a lot of contact with the natives', explained Nowacka. ‘It was a wonderful time for me: travelling from village to village and vocal meditations in these churches’.

During another trip to Mexico, Nowacka was invited to an artist residency at Lake Chapala. There she had the opportunity to play the organ in a local church and sing in a closed sanctuary. She recalled: 'In addition to myself, numerous birds spent time there, which generated arresting soundscapes. I sang there and played the zither'.

Spirituality as manifestation of energy

Due to the place of its creation and, above all, the very nature of this music, Nowacka's work is often described in terms of its spirituality. When asked about this dimension, the artist answers that she perceives it as a kind of energy.

I do not associate spirituality with religion, but rather with a sense of some unimaginable beauty, peace, purpose, love for oneself and the world in all its manifestations. I think that spiritual states manifest under the influence of particular experiences or in certain conditions. Favourable connections occur, and information is revealed that is usually marginalised because it bears little relation to the natural preferences of the survival instinct.

Written by Jan Błaszczak Oct 2021, edited by AZ.

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