073: Oj Borom, Borom, by Maniucha i Ksawery

Maniucha i Ksawery (Poland)
Oj Borom, Borom (2017)
16 tracks, 46 minutes
Bandcamp • Spotify • iTunes

This album is mad. It has a weird concept, and it sounds exactly like you’d expect that concept to sound, except, somehow, good. Concept: a Polish folk singer, singing traditional Ukrainian songs with utmost reverence, accompanied by avant-garde jazz double bass, and nothing else. There is absolutely no reason why it should work, but it does.

The singer is Maniucha Bikont, who was taught these songs of Ukrainian village life by three fierce old ladies, Hanna, Halya and Lonia. The women were happy to teach Maniucha as many songs as they knew, but the condition was that she had to be able to perform each one perfectly before being taught the next one – the process took five years in total. Double bassist Ksawery Wójciński is an important figure in jazz and improvisatory music, playing with many top names in Poland as well as creating his own solo work on which he plays all the parts himself.

When I saw them live at WOMEX 17 in Katowice, Poland, their stage presence really accentuated the contrast of styles. Maniucha wore a simple pink dress and alternated between sitting down and singing with hands on hips or clasped in front of her; Ksawery wore the loudest shirt I’ve ever seen, a flowery/tie-dye sort of thing, while he plucked, strummed, bashed, scraped and basically climbed all over his bass when the opportunities arose.

Despite their differences, the two musicians are obviously very much in tune with each other, with enough trust running both ways for each to leave enough space for the other to do their thing. They come together, sometimes in agreement and sometimes in contradiction, and also depart from each other at times, but never in ways that leave the pieces feeling lacking.

I would like to explain really how they make their clash of styles work so well, but I’m not sure I can. Their sounds are worlds away from each other, but maybe this is a case of being so different, that they’ve looped back around and met up again, back to back.