The Tricity-based septet Klawo plays eclectic music stretched between jazz improvisation, funky grooves and beat sensibilities.
‘In Klawo we make sure that everyone has a say in the sound of a song. There is democracy with diplomacy’, I hear from pianist Malina Midera when I ask how the band’s songs are created. The question seemed all the more pertinent to me, as Klawo is a septet with as many as three additional keyboard players. Given the group’s line-up today, it’s hard to believe that it started with a solo album, 2019’s Flądra, by Konstanty Kostka, a Tricity-based pianist who made his debut largely using a sampler. However, it wasn’t long before he was approached by Gdynia-based label Coastline Northern Cuts to present this material arranged for a full-fledged band. It was then that Kostka was joined by the aforementioned Midera, drummer and keyboardist Tomasz Rafalski, flutist and vocalist Alicja Sobstyl, bassist Artur Szalsza and trumpeter Karol Tchórz. And this is how Klawo came into being.
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Klawo, photo: Marius Dan Moga / the band's promotional materials
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The sextet – which grew into a septet when drummer Jakub Krzanowski joined the line-up – was recruited from among students at the Academy of Music in Gdańsk and brought together young musicians with diverse backgrounds and fascinations (from extreme metal to electronic avant-pop). The bond in this case was a love of the sound of synthesisers, as well as an upbringing on electronic and hip-hop music. In the words of the musicians:
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You could say that we run classical arrangement solutions through a beat sensibility. Often, when composing, we start by programming the base tracks in Ableton, and only then do we work out the individual parts for the entire composition. This sampler inspiration, however, is more about the style and sound of Klawo than the creative process itself. We are still first and foremost instrumentalists and songwriters accustomed to working on material as a team during rehearsals, rather than beatmakers operating on samples and loops.
Such an unusual genesis of the band’s formation had additional advantages. To begin with, the title of the first piece from Flądra, where the funky clavinet comes to the fore, served as the band’s name. Above all, instead of inventing new songs from scratch, Klawo very quickly started playing concerts with original arrangements of compositions from Flądra. This was one of the reasons why the sextet did not lack motivation at this early stage. On the contrary, the good reception of the songs and the joint performances mobilised the artists to start working on new compositions, which, as has already been said, were created with respect for democracy. The musicians reveal that in Klawo, anyone can come to the rehearsal with their own idea for a piece. There are as many band members as there are composers – and it is this combination of styles that ultimately makes up the group’s sound.
Of course, the ideas do not stop there. What the musicians bring is always filtered through a collective sensibility and developed during rehearsals. Moreover, this process does not end with the recording of the songs. One only has to listen to the debut album Klawo and the live album released a year later to see that their evolution is ongoing. Perhaps it will never end.
Gdańsk cool
Klawo are further representatives of the thriving Tricity scene. An environment that has often approached the jazz tradition with – nomen omen – love, but also a certain youthful irreverence. Several generations of artists from Gdańsk and the surrounding area are united by an enduring inclination towards humour (or at least a relaxed attitude) and an eclecticism that is not afraid to dip its toes in the occasional chaos. Klawo fits into this trend, and their music is unlikely to become the soundtrack for academies and assembly meetings. Its members seem to be fully aware of this:
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There is an expert term to describe this phenomenon: ‘the Gdańsk cool’ (or, in Polish, ‘luzik’). This approach to the creative process pervades the Tricity scene, with its good and bad sides. Firstly, thanks to it, artists in the Tricity are not egotists with a thirst for money, and their careers are often more important than their interests in creating interesting music in good company. We have the impression that our scene is built on cooperation and bonding; we don’t feel much rivalry or jealousy here. On the other hand, the bad thing about the laid-back scene in Gdańsk is that a lot of creative energy is burnt out on projects where, after a period of intense activity, the excitement dies down and when you have to grab the bull by the horns, you simply don’t want to do it.
However, Klawo musicians have no doubt that playing with the scene in mind benefits all its members. The stronger the community, the easier it is for its representatives to break through. As evidence of this, they present the careers of bands such as Immortal Onion, Lasy, Nene Heroine and Artificialice. Interestingly, they represent very different aesthetics, but what they have in common – apart from their postcode – is the jazz background of their members. If Klawo draws on this tradition, it is certainly the jazz-funk fusions that are closest to them. His musicians have a special respect for such explorations performed by Michał Urbaniak and Zbigniew Namysłowski, who added a pinch of Polish folklore to the mix. In their search for a funky groove in their native backyard, the Tricity artists also explored the history of Polish popular music, catching it in the songs of Halina Frąckowiak, Breakout and even Krzysztof Krawczyk.
Although the musicians of Klawo encourage similar archival explorations, their closest work can be found on albums by their contemporaries, such as Tropical Soldiers in Paradise or P.Unity, with whom the Tricity septet shares a large line-up and an ‘unorthodox approach to groove music’. In this context, it’s also worth mentioning the compilation Generacja Jazz, released by U Know Me, which opens with a Klawo track. As the title of the compilation indicates, one of the connecting factors here is the age of the creators – at the time of the recordings, the members of all the bands were under 30. A common thread is also the jazz education of the artists combined with a great openness to other musical genres. And yet the members of Klawo are not convinced that they fit into such a group because of the second part of its name:
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We don’t quite feel like a jazz band despite a few elements borrowed from the genre, such as instrumentation and improvised solos. Certainly, jazz studies have made it easier for us to use certain resources (musical notation, knowledge of harmony) to write and play relatively complex arrangements. On the other hand, stylistically we feel further away from the contemporary jazz mainstream than most of the (otherwise excellent) bands that appeared on that album.
Hip-hop and other things from the closet
So it should come as no surprise that Klawo promoted their debut album with a quote from Jędrzej Dudek of P.Unity. According to the vocalist of this psychedelic-funk band, ‘Klawo looks into the old closet, but the kind that has no corpses inside. Their roots lie in Herbie Hancock and fellow devotees of the groovy ‘70s jazz.’ Dudek goes on to point out that the songs were equally influenced by lo-fi beat tapes and songs. The reference points for Klawo’s debut are thus simultaneously The Meters, J Dilla and Mac DeMarco. As part of his Bandcamp Daily English-language column, Jakub Knera also wrote enthusiastically about Klawo’s album:
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Their debut LP, released in July, is brilliant, filled with wonderful melodies. It’s occasionally reminiscent of the young British jazz scene, with its pulsating funk sound, but also boasts arrangements that would have been great [in productions made] in the golden age of Polish radio and television.
This British connection seems important. It also shows that young Polish jazz musicians – or, rather artists with a jazz education – are increasingly looking towards London rather than New York. After all, the already mentioned Immortal Onion can be added to this group, as well as the Wrocław-based Sneaky Jesus or EABS (and all its mutations).
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We are very fond of some of the London bands like Cicada, Shabaki Hutchings' projects, the Vels Trio or the much-missed duo Yussef Kamaal, but this is only one context and reference point for our music. […] We should also mention the Los Angeles scene (the brilliant albums by Sam Gendel and Sam Wilkes), the Chicago-based label International Anthem (Makaya McRaven, the beautiful debut by Resavoir) or the Scandinavian school of Athletic Progression. There is a common thought in all this music and it could be defined as a sub-genre, which to some extent we also represent and whose development we curiously observe – as both artists and listeners.
If one were to look for common ground between the aforementioned scenes and catalogues, it would probably be a gravitation towards melodicism – rather than free jazz and avant-garde – but also an inspiration from hip-hop. Or perhaps even a recognition of it as a stage or offshoot in the evolution of jazz music. Hence it should come as no surprise that Klawo – like EABS at its origins – has shared performances with representatives of this scene: the now-defunct Tricity-based band UNDADASEA, Jakub Bryndal or the rapper hiding behind the pseudonym Mihi X.N.D.R.
As the members of Klawo reveal, we can look forward to more collaborations with them in the near future. Since we spoke, the band has released its second studio album, 2 Bobry i Zachód Słońca (2 Beavers and a Sunset).
