Janusz Prusinowski has created a Polish Renaissance
Award-winning artist and composer Janusz Prusinowski is a true superhero. He has saved traditional mazurka music from a slow death and an undeserved bad reputation.
In recent years, there has been a surge of interest in traditional music in Poland. An arena has developed where young musicians, often from the city, meet older fiddlers dedicated to the mazurka genre from the countryside. Barely ten to twenty years ago, this would have been unthinkable. During the Soviet era, folk music was actively used in communist propaganda. In Poland, this led to traditional tunes being associated with politics and an authoritarian regime. Naturally, this made folk music very unpopular in many circles, and fewer and fewer people wanted to listen to or play this type of music. Janusz Prusinowski is one of those who should be credited with reversing this trend.
As a young and promising musician, Prusinowski dreamed of studying composition in Krakow. This plan changed when, almost thirty years ago, he stumbled upon a documentary film by the famous artist, Andrzej Bieńkowski. In the 1970s, Bieńkowski established a studio in the village of Ulaski Grazmiackie. Here he became acquainted with a number of older musicians who had been born around the end of the First World War. They played traditional mazurka music, and many of them, for example Jan Gaca, would turn out to be great artists in this genre. Yet no one showed any interest in listening to them. Not even in their own village. At that time, folk music had already acquired a very low status, not least in intellectual and artistic circles. However, Bienkowski believed that he was faced with a treasure that was far too valuable to crumble away. He ended up putting both his reputation and his career at risk by starting to document the mazurka tradition.
A couple of decades later, Bienkowski's work will finally see real results. The reason is primarily the great talent and convincing enthusiasm of Janusz Prusinowski, who chose to dedicate his life to the hidden tones of the hinterland. - Why should we preserve folk music? He asks rhetorically. It's like asking why traditions are important. When it comes to music, the answer is quite simple: Beautiful music should be played and danced to.
Still, Prusinowski admits that he has faced many challenges in his work. - I have sacrificed a lot. There has often been little money in my wallet, and I have had to spend a lot of time and effort to bring life to a world that was disappearing. Sometimes it feels like I should be embarrassed when I say that I play folk music and traditional polka. People frown and immediately think of the music that was produced under communism. When people don't know what this music actually is, they don't appreciate it either.
Despite skepticism from the uninitiated, Prusinowski has received several awards and prestigious prizes. He has started a mazurka festival in Warsaw, which took place for the sixth time in April. In addition, he tours around the world, making the Polish mazurka tradition known far beyond Poland's borders.
Janusz Prusinowski Kompania has a concert on Saturday, July 4th at 6:30 PM - and until Førde They also bring with them the world-renowned pianist Janusz Olejniezcak, from the film The Pianist.
The interview was conducted by Araceli Tzigane for El Pais - and translated into Norwegian by Kamilla Mygland Storaker.