I started travelling to the Ukrainian countryside and this world immediately drew me in. For a good few years I visited Ukraine, Russia and Belarus several times a year.
Before moving to the countryside, Bikont really learnt to sing in her first important ensemble. The group in question was Dziczka, which performed traditional Ukrainian songs and was led by Tetiana Sopiłka, an ethnomusicologist affiliated with the Ukrainian National Academy of Music in Kyiv. The band continues to play and perform to this day. Its third album Pąć, which consists of folk songs of a religious nature, was released in 2021.
Lost & found
Interest in traditional culture also guided Maniucha Bikont’s academic path. As a student of Cultural Studies at the Institute of Polish Culture at the University of Warsaw, she did not seek to participate in the Erasmus+ programme at all. While her peers were planning semester-long trips to Western Europe, she was enjoying the Visegrad Scholarship, which allowed her to go to Kyiv. At the music academy there, she learnt from pedagogues who combined science and practice in their work, namely ethnomusicology and singing. One of them was Professor Yevhen Yefremov, founder of the Drewo ensemble, which is so close to her. Her stay in Kyiv was certainly one of the inspirations for the topic of her master’s thesis, which Bikont devoted precisely to the combining of singing practice and science in the field of folkloristics.
Alongside groups and initiatives established in Lublin or Kyiv, Bikont is an important figure on the scene of new traditional music in her native Warsaw. Together with her partner, the violinist and saxhornist Michał Maziarz, she has been involved in the activities of the House of Dance Association for many years. It was in this environment that she discovered the Polish countryside: the swirl of the mazurka and the power of the chant. After the death of the eminent folk fiddler Jan Gaca, it was Maziarz who threw out the slogan to start a new musical quest in the Kielce region.
We quickly discovered that, in the memory of the oldest musicians in the area, what made up a wedding band were the wind instruments. From this search, the band Tęgie Chłopy was born. There was a demand for clarinet, trumpet, accordion, saxhorn and tuba. And it just so happened that I had one of these at home.
The tuba was left with her by Maciej Kaziński – singer, multi-instrumentalist and long-time director of the Pieśń Naszych Korzeni [The Song of our Roots] festival in Jarosław. The artist recalls:
Maciek visited me on a social occasion while passing through Warsaw and left this tuba there. And I was used to the fact that if there was an instrument in the house, you played it, so I took it. And that coincided with Tęgie Chłopy, where there was a need to add such a tuba. So I put my mind to it and now I play it.
As a tuba player, Bikont currently performs not only traditional music. She also takes part in experimental, sonoristic projects. One of these is Ensemble E, a group led by Swedish saxophonist and composer Mats Gustaffson. The ensemble debuted in 2022 at the 14th KODY Festival of Music Tradition and Avant-Garde in Lublin. For Bikont, this was by no means the first concert with a distinctly avant-garde flavour. She has performed works by, among others, Bogusław Schaeffer, Cezary Duchnowski, Iannis Xenakis and Zygmunt Krauze. In the Niewte ensemble, he juxtaposes the rhythm of country dances with the pulse of club music and ‘glitchy’ electronics. In addition, Bikont composes radio plays and records theatre and film music. As an expert in traditional Ukrainian songs, she arranged the wedding scenes in Wojciech Smarzowski’s film Volyn.
Storytelling with an instrument
Collaborating with artists representing different backgrounds helped Bikont to develop an original musical path. She explains:
I am testing whether singing, which I have known primarily as functioning in a singing group, can be translated into a partnership with an instrument – including one from a different genre than traditional music. So that we can tell stories together.
