P.Unity

A band of ten based in Warsaw that transplants the funky mythology of Parliament-Funkadelic to Polish soil.

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P.Unity

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P.Unity, photo Monika Orpik / courtesy of the artists

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The origins of P.Unity date back to 2005, when guitarist Maciej Sondij and vocalist Jędrzej Dudek began performing covers of their favourite artists together. They were thirteen, maybe fourteen years old at the time and were really just learning to play. The roles they took on in the group stemmed more from the need of the moment than from experience, because the latter simply wasn’t there. The formation of P.Unity was therefore a long process and the first musical rehearsals were separated by many years from the first recordings.

Dudek explains:

There is no clear historical moment of “founding the band”. The band was not founded by anyone in the sense of gathering specific people focused on a particular musical style. Even the name evolved as the band changed. The fact that P.Unity crystallised under this name and with this stylistic profile is the result of a natural and quite spontaneous musical development.

The aforementioned profile consists primarily of inspirations from the funk scene of the 1970s, with a particular focus on the discography of George Clinton’s bands: Funkadelic. The work of P.Unity was certainly also influenced by artists associated with the neo-soul/hip-hop collective Soulquarians, such as Bilal, Erykah Badu and D’Angelo. The fact that the Polish scene was not suffering from a lack of bands playing in this style was by no means intimidating for the musicians.

Dudek recalls:

We arrived at it spontaneously, so at no stage was there any thought about whether a project with this or that profile would work out or not. We had an idealistic, adolescent approach. We felt that the music we liked was the best and it was obvious that everyone wanted to listen to it. When it comes to music, we really don’t think at all about whether something will catch on or not.

It is worth mentioning that the name P.Unity refers not only to the music, but also to the philosophy or mythology that accompanied the albums recorded by Clinton’s bands – an Afrofuturist vision of the world out of Ishmael Reed’s literature, which is referred to as P-Funk Mythology.

Turn up the heat!

Before P.Unity debuted with the EP Mango, the band’s line-up had grown significantly. The group recorded its first album as a nonet – now it consists of as many as ten musicians. In addition to Sondij (guitar) and Dudek (vocals), the group consists of: Miłosz Oleniecki (keyboards), Rafał Dutkiewicz (drums), Adrian Manowski (bass), Michał Łuka (saxophone), Radek Nowak (trumpet), Witold Haliniak (trombone), Sara Jaroszczyk and Weronika Grzesiewicz (vocals). Dudek explains: ‘We usually met in the rehearsal room, played together and then grew in numbers. Usually the enlargement of the line-up came from the desire to broaden the sound possibilities and the need to add new musical layers.’

Speaking of the compositional process, Dudek uses a metaphor from the realm of gastronomy, which grows directly out of Clinton’s philosophy.

Personally, I am very fond of the approach that treats music as a large cauldron, into which one constantly adds, from which ingredients added in the past by other composers surface. Everything blends together into a whole, where it is not about the contribution of specific individuals, but about the flavour of the whole.

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P.Unity - Milk [UKM 069]

Although P.Unity’s songs do indeed crystallize during playing as an ensemble, three musicians are responsible for their sketches. The first impulse usually comes from Sondij, whose suggestions are then passed on to Dudek and Oleniecki. If the sketches convince them, it is in this trio that the next elements are worked out: arrangements and lyrics. Otherwise, the ideas go back into the drawer.

And there has never been a shortage of ideas in P.Unity, one reason for the being that the ten musicians who make up the group also contribute to other bands, often rooted in other genres and scenes. Dudek and Sondij perform in the psychedelic-soul band Beluga Stone, Oleniecki plays jazz with Jazzpospolita, among others, Dutkiewicz performs with Skalpel, and Jaroszczyk has recorded solo in an R&B style. And yet, this is still only a fragment of the collective’s versatile activity. Activity which, of course, is not without influence on P.Unity.

Dudek explains:

Everyone carries his or her own musical sensibility with them and it cannot be silenced or erased. Nobody tries, either. Even if one performs the ideas of others, because that is how the composing process is arranged, one runs them through one’s own style and way of doing things, so necessarily the influences of each individual come out.

Dudek notes that the involvement of musicians in side projects has another benefit. After all, the band operates within a stylistically defined framework, for which reason not all ideas can be realised under the name P.Unity. The fact that the members of the group also have the opportunity to realise their ideas in other line-ups makes it easier to maintain the artistic coherence of the ten-member ensemble.

Energy & logistics

P.Unity’s debut album, titled Pulp, was released in 2018 by U Know Me Records. Signing with an outfit that historically grows out of the hip-hop community and recording a single with rapper Kuba Knap brought the funk band’s work to a new audience. For the members of P.Unity, it was anyway never an alien environment. Dudek explains:

Most of us have listened to rap at some stage in our lives or continue to listen to it. There have always been some connections between us and the rap scene: social or more professional. Part of the line-up played in live bands of rappers from Ortega Cartel to Eldo to Otsochodzi.

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P.Unity, "Pulp", photo U Know Me

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The artist admits that after the release of the track with Knap, audiences expecting more hip-hop began to turn up at the funk band’s concerts. Despite such a misunderstanding, many of them kept coming back for the group’s subsequent shows. Dudek claims:

This is [...] the undoubted power of a large line-up – regardless of stylistic preferences, few people can resist the energy generated by such a big group. For a large part of the audience, it is also often a shock that a band can sound completely different live than on albums. This is especially true for strictly rap audiences, who often mainly experienced concerts played as a line-up: DJ, rapper, hypeman.

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P.Unity - FUNKJEST feat. Kuba Knap [UKM 069]

Indeed, there is a consensus in the reviewing community: the P.Unity concerts are a real event. Bartek Chaciński wrote about their performances on the Polifonia blog: ‘A nine-piece funk-soul-jazz orchestra, playing with the fervour of today’s Daptone-affiliated musicians, with the energy of Jamiroquai and the charm of Prince.

If P.Unity are different from a young George Clinton in anything, it is certainly in the frequency with which they release albums. This is due to a philosophy that does not allow them to release music until the group is absolutely convinced of its quality. On the other hand, the logistics are also important, which is a challenge with such an extensive line-up. Dudek admits:

The material for the second album was already finished in July 2021, and we only finished recording 2-3 months ago. The album is already in the mixing stage, so we quietly hope to share it in early 2023.