Trubadurzy
The first line-up of the band Trubadurzy, formed in 1963, included Sławomir Kowalewski (band leader, bass guitar and vocals), Krzysztof Krawczyk (guitar and vocals) and Bogdan Borkowski (guitar and vocals). After a short time, Sława Mikołajczyk (vocals) joined them. Their biggest role model, like young bands on all continents, were the Beatles. In the first years of the band’s existence, Trubadurzy often covered songs by the Liverpool Four. The one who came up with the name was Borkowski; initially, they were to be called The Troubadours, in English.
Krzysztof Krawczyk recorded memories from his first concerts in a diary written during his stay in the United States, created out of longing and anxiety felt because of the imposition of martial law. The concert took place in the Sports Hall in Łódź, during the carnival period of post-secondary education. The amateur band performed before the great stars of bigbit, Czerwono-Czarni.
Twelve thousand people shouted after our performance: 'Trubadurzy, Trubadurzy!!!'. In later years, we had a huge number of concerts like that, but this concert in Łódź was the first. I also remember when, as employees of Estrada Łódź, we played for a few thousand young people in the Poniatowski Park. Young people danced, sang, lit torches made of newspapers, until the police with dogs had to intervene, because who knows how it would have ended. I was 19 at the time.
The band’s trademark was their distinctive costumes. At first, they wore shirts with jabots and frock coats, that is, a kind of coat with cut-out and rounded waists popular in the Biedermeier period. Apparently, frock coats were Stanisław Wyspiański’s favourite outfit, in his time an extremely old-fashioned choice. It was extremely uncomfortable for them – the costumes were made of thick material, steaming them from the inside like a sauna. The next iteration of the ensemble’s image, costumes resembling those of the Musketeers, were already much more comfortable. They were designed by Szymon Kobyliński, an outstanding illustrator, one of the pioneers of Polish comics and a historian of comics. The inspiration for their new look came from posters promoting the play Cyrano de Bergerac at the Stefan Jaracz Theatre in Łódź, which they saw on a walk returning from a rehearsal. Krawczyk was to say: 'Gentlemen, what are we even discussing? Everyone wanted to be a musketeer in their lifetime.'
Another characteristic element of the Trubadurzy concerts was the choreography; each song was accompanied by a different performance. Estrada Łódzka, with which they were contracted, required them to dance with guitars. Microphones were attached to guitars, which did not make things easy – the necessity to perform with two cables, one connected to the microphone, the other to the guitar, was quite troublesome.
In 1966, the Troubadours made their debut at the National Festival of Polish Songs in Opole. For the song Ondraszku, Ondraszku, they received the second prize in the Youth Concert. They were one of the most popular bigbit bands in Poland, giving concerts all over the country. Their music combined various trends in rock music (from psychedelia and progressive rock to funk rock), multi-person vocal parts known from the doo-wop genre and inspirations from eastern folklore, especially Russian romances. It was the references to Russian-Roma music that defined the character of the first records of the piece, particularly audible in the harmonies and characteristic melodic turns. Recorded in 1968, the debut album Krajobrazy (Landscapes) gained the status of a Gold Record. Also, Ryszard Poznakowski (organ, piano) joined the band.
Trubadurzy gained enormous popularity not only in Poland. They became real stars in the Soviet Union – for that audience they were a whiff of the West. Their records released by Melodiya were sold out in huge numbers (Andrzej Kosmala claims that they were sold in millions). During the tour in 1969, they played about 70 concerts. During concerts in the USSR, they sometimes sang in English, which was always met with resistance by Soviet censors. Trubadurzy tried to get out of the impasse with arguments about the correct ideological origin of rock and roll; they said that these were 'songs of slaves, sung against their oppressors'. In this way, they even obtained permission to sing the Beatles... In his autobiography, Krawczyk wrote:
I remember that in the southern republics of the Soviet Union there was a lot of militia because they knew that during the Trubadurzy concerts there was the so-called ‘aszapasz’, which means improper behaviour of the audience, waving jackets, dancing, getting up from the seats, when the ‘aszapasz’ reached a critical level. When this happened in Georgia, in Tbilisi, they simply cut off our electricity. The servicemen told us: please do not play this song, you can play this one. And please do not provoke, because you will need to leave.
Returning from a tour of the Soviet Union, Trubadurzy were stopped at the border with illegally transported dollars and gold.
They also performed in Mongolia (over 20 concerts), East Germany, West Germany, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Belgium and the Netherlands, amongst other countries. One of the greatest achievements of the ensemble was their performance at a concert organised on the occasion of the Olympic Games in Munich in 1972 (it is worth mentioning that Krzysztof Penderecki's Ekecheiria was performed at the opening ceremony of the Games).
In 1969, Ryszard Poznakowski left the band. Halina Żytkowiak (later Krzysztof Krawczyk’s wife) took his place. The band broke up in 1973, when Krawczyk started his solo career. In 1974, Marian Lichtman left Poland and immigrated to Denmark, his parents having left Poland during the anti-Semitic campaign in March 1968. Lichtman informed Trubadurzy about his decision at the last moment and his departure was a great blow to Krzysztof Krawczyk, as the two were close friends. The group was reactivated in 1976, the same year Krawczyk left it again. Trubadurzy continue to give concerts to this day.