Even though, as the artist’s website says, the music on the record is inspired by traditional musical scales, it is not an archival music compilation but a coherent project speaking a contemporary language. This language is founded on the unique styles of the two characters, their charisma and artistic experience, gained through experiments with ethnic, archaic and rock music.
Karolina Cicha, together with Bart Bałyga, took part in the Polish-Pakistani music project at the invitation of the Polish embassy in Islamabad (Poland & Pakistan: Music Without Borders). These two musical worlds: Eastern European and South Asian met in Pakistan in December 2014. On the Polish side: the hurdy-gurdy, cymbals and electric guitars, and on the Pakistani: zithers, sarangis, tablas. Cicha’s vocals were complemented by Shafqat Ali Khan, a singer and master of the Ghazal tradition.
Jidyszland
Karolina Cicha developed the Jewish theme which first appeared on Wieloma Językami (9 Languages) on her subsequent album JIDYSZLAND (Yiddishland), based on texts by Jewish poets of north-eastern Poland. The poetic copiousness of Yiddish is yet enriched by ethno-jazz compositions co-created with Piotr Domagalski. Jazz-rock instrumentation is complemented by exotic, ethnic sounds. The album opens with a solo version of the song Białystok majn hejm. The album also includes one of the forgotten texts by Rabbi Eliezer Szulma from Tykocin, and a fragment of the song Simches Tojre Lid by Rivka Tiktiner, a 16th-century scholar, whose ancestors came from the region. The album features the song by the Jewish poet Andrzej Włast, Rebecca, as a bonus track
Karolina Cicha has been awarded at numerous Polish and international festivals and reviews: she received the 2nd prize at the Stage Song Review (Przegląd Piosenki Aktorskiej) in Wrocław and the main prize at the Chansons Festival in Köln. In 2013, she received the Grand Prix, Audience Award and the Czesław Niemen Award at the Polish Radio’s New Tradition Folk Festival.
Sources: www.karolinacicha.eu, Polityka, Gazeta Wyborcza, Ed. AL, December 2014 r., transl. AM, update: GS, August 2015