Composer, arranger, pianist. Member of the band EABS and the Błoto quartet, his solo album ‘Marianna’ was recorded under the name Latarnik (‘The Lamplighter’). He believes in the power of looping and storytelling with sound. Although he has stopped rapping, he still hears hip-hop in his music.
Marek Pędziwiatr was born in 1987 in Świnoujście. His grandfather was a multi-instrumentalist and ran numerous clubs in Pomerania, while his uncle played trombone in various jazz ensembles. When Marek was seven years old, his parents enrolled him at the state music school of the first degree in Świnoujście. To this day, Pędziwiatr maintains contact with his first piano teacher, Anna Kask, who listened attentively to his first compositional attempts and wrote them down on a score. The musician recalls that even then he felt a subconscious need for creative freedom. The year 1994 was a key year in the artist’s development, not only because he started learning to play an instrument. At the same time, his cousin, who had access to a satellite dish, turned on a VHS cassette of hip-hop videos for the first time. The artist recalls:
He hyped it up for me so much that he created a mystical atmosphere around this music. Eventually, he sat me down on the sofa, turned on the VCR and there was Cypress Hill with the song ‘Lick a Shot’. From then on, I knew what real rap sounded like – the fascination and the search for that dirty sound everywhere began.
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Meet the lighthouse keeper, who translates the past.
His love of hip-hop grew a few years later – unfortunately, under dramatic circumstances. In late 1997 and early 1998, as a ten-year-old, Marek Pędziwiatr had to drop out of music school. In fact, he had to drop everything because he was diagnosed with cancer.
It was like stepping into a parallel world. When I look back on it, the children who were in hospital with me were facing the problems of the elderly. I had friends who were coming to terms with death: some were passing away, others were recovering. I myself was reconciled to the fact that I might die. But I had my antidote at the time – two trunks of cassettes. There I had my whole world. I listened mainly to American rap: productions by DJ Muggs of Cypress Hill, EPMD, Method Man, Public Enemy, Beastie Boys, Ice-T... When it was all over, I returned to the world of the healthy richer internally. Since then, I’ve been able to focus completely on music.
He continued to be accompanied on his musical path by his older brother and cousin. When the latter started breakdancing, Marek Pędziwiatr followed in his footsteps. They usually danced to hip-hop kept to faster rhythms, as well as breakbeat and electro house. However, during one such session, the pianist’s cousin brought a cassette of calmer music. Pędziwiatr recalls:
He said it was ‘acid jazz’. I remember it was a piece by the London collective Bubbatunes called ‘This is Just a Dance’. Throughout the whole piece a sound from Herbie Hancock’s ‘Calypso’ was looped. It liked it so much it opened me to new music. Jazz became another point of interest – initially because it mixed so well with rap.
Deeper & deeper waters
During this period, Pędziwiatr absorbed music from many sources. He has particularly fond memories of the cult programme WuDoo hosted by Aśka Tyszkiewicz and DJ Twister on Polish Radio Szczecin, as well as the well-received German radio station N-Joy Radio in his hometown. Świnoujście also had a local radio station. On Radio 44, under the auspices of Świnoujście hip-hop pioneer Artur Warzecha, a programme about rap was hosted by Tomasz Banach and Robert Piernikowski. The latter was already performing in the jewel of the Świnoujście scene – the Napszyklat group. Pędziwiatr still remembers how devastated he was when his parents refused to let him go to a concert of the local star. No wonder – he was about 10 years old at the time.
Marek Pędziwiatr not only listened to music, but also tried to create it. Admittedly, after returning from hospital, he did not return to music school, but tried to create hip-hop beats with his brother. Looking for samples on jazz records, he began to explore this musical genre more and more. He imitated the sounds he heard on his home piano and also attended various workshops. For some time, his teacher was the pianist Tomasz Żyrmont, who not only revealed many secrets of playing to the young jazz adept, but also took him to jam sessions in Szczecin and encouraged him not to be afraid to perform with people better than himself. Dariusz Ryżczak, a local music promoter and manager of Jazz Club Centrala, has also mobilised him in a similar way.
Darek gave me the opportunity to do my first live projects. Also, he often threw me in at the deep end. I remember when he got me involved in the Ściółka project. I was about 19 years old and I played an improvised concert on double bass in the company of American trumpeter Herb Robertson, saxophonist Lotte Anker and Mikołaj Trzaska. It was a unique experience, it gave me a lot of courage and discipline.
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Marek Pędziwiatr, Sopot, 2020, photo: Karol Makurat/Reporter/East News
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Despite this, when Pędziwiatr had to decide on his field of study, he chose English philology. Firstly, he thought that he would not get into the Academy of Music without having completed two degrees from music school. Secondly, he didn’t quite believe that playing and composing could eventually become his profession. In both cases he was wrong.
Followers of the loop
One of the realizations came about quickly. Immediately after graduating in English, he became a student at the Academy of Music in Katowice.
My studies taught me to play in such a way as to surprise myself. Then we can play something that no one has heard before. This is what Marek Walarowski taught me in his ensemble classes. He made me play a solo until I played something he had never heard before. The academy, which can turn a musician into a ‘playing machine’, had the exact opposite effect on me. It reassured me that I had my own style and it was worth nurturing.
Eventually, Pędziwiatr decided to quit after completing his bachelor’s degree. The reason was the musical world he had by then managed to create in Wrocław. At the centre of it was the band EABS – a jazz septet founded by Spisek Jeden, celebrating its hip-hop roots. The group had a long association with the Puzzle club, where they not only tested ideas for future compositions, but also happened to accompany rappers. When asked how his fascination with hip-hop manifests itself in the songs he writes, Pędziwiatr admits that he loves to ‘savour the loop’.
Even though every subsequent loop played organically won’t be perfectly the same, maintaining its magic is something essential for me. In playing loops you first of all have to believe, and that’s not at all easy. In Błoto collective’s compositions, everyone shares that faith. In EABS, on the other hand, loops are mostly part of the arrangement. A truly infectious loop puts both us and the listener into a trance.
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Perhaps it was the hip-hop pedigree that made EABS take time to win over the jazz community. According to the Polish saying that ‘it is the darkest under the lamp-post’, this process took the longest in Wrocław. Everything changed with the release of the album ‘Repetitions (Letters to Krzysztof Komeda)’. The Septet almost immediately became the hottest new band on the Polish jazz scene. The excellent chemistry of the musicians, the intriguing choice of songs, the excellent album release and, above all, the brave reading of Komeda’s compositions made this album the talk of the town. After all, it is not often that an artist writes lyrics to a Komeda piece. Previously, Agnieszka Osiecka did it, writing the verses of ‘Nim Wstanie Dzień’ [‘Before the Sun Rises’], for the film ‘The Law and the Fist’. Only she did not rap.
Although Pędziwiatr abandoned rapping after the first album, this did not stop EABS from continuing to make a name for itself and building its position on the jazz scene, with, incidentally, good relations with fans of other genres, including hip-hop.
I continue to love this music, but I’m now pursuing it in a non-obvious way. To do hip-hop, you don’t need rapping, scratches and a beat. In fact, it’s often the case that these elements are present, and it’s still not real rap. By way of experience, I know that real hip-hop is all about brazenness, truth, trance, intention and grime.
Since the release of their album dedicated to Komeda, EABS have recorded three more albums: ‘Slavic Spirits’ (2019), ‘Discipline of Sun Ra’ (2020) and ‘2061’ (2022), as well as the concert album ‘Repetitions (Letters To Krzysztof Komeda) Live At Jazz Club Hipnoza’ (2018).
Other stories
Although EABS records regularly and the band’s touring schedule can be busy, in 2020 its members formed another group. As Pędziwiatr recalls, Błoto was born by accident, during a day off on tour, and from the beginning was the result of collective improvisation.
At EABS, the tracks come from the individual band members. We realise individual compositions and transform them into the sound of the group. We treat works by other musicians in a similar way. Błoto, on the other hand, is the result of collective improvisation. We compose together, and the music is born in the studio each time.
The quartet, in which Pędziwiatr performs under the pseudonym Latarnik (‘The Lamplighter’), has made three albums, on which they are even more willing to reach for hip-hop rhythms and funky grooves.
In his artistic explorations, the musician refers not only to traditions born on the other side of the Atlantic. He took part in the recording sessions for the album ‘Nafs at Peace’ by the Pakistani group Jaubi, with whom he still happily collaborates today.
I have just recorded a joint album with Jaubi and EABS, at the Monochrom studio in the heart of Kotlina Kłodzka. A while later I flew to London to record Jaubi’s second album at the legendary Real World Studios. I have the impression that the leader of this band Ali Riaz Baqar is my incarnation in a different place, but at the same time. Like me, he comes from hip-hop culture, but uniquely combines it with Hindustani and jazz.
The artist also found an extra-musical connection in the life story of his great-grandmother Marianna, whom he named his debut solo album after. He explains that in a difficult life marked by wars, she found time to learn herbalism and witchcraft. She was an exemplary Catholic who, however, still believed in folkloric witchcraft, which fitted perfectly with the ideas that had pushed EABS to record the album ‘Slavic Spirits’ a few years earlier. Pędziwiatr admits that without finding such a connection, the album ‘Marianna’ would probably not have been made at all. He explains:
Playing solo is something that very rarely went beyond the walls of my house. I don't consider myself a virtuoso. The most important thing for me is to describe a story with sounds. When it’s not there, I don’t see the point in babbling about just anything. Especially since I’m not drawn towards acrobatics. I don’t have to prove anything.
