Set the Way Back Machine to....Gdansk Gusli!

A few months ago I got a disc and letter in the mail from my ever-creative musical pal in Warsaw, Mr. Roberto Delira (aka Robert Jaworski of Zwiolak, ich troLa and various other heavy folk projects.)

The disc was a preview ep for his new project,  Roberto Delira i Kompany.  (In Polish "kompany" used this way is an archaic word for a collection of friends and partners.) As his band Zwiolak was straying away from the ancient roots of their heavy folk sound (think rockin' hurdy gurdy and female vocals a' la Hedningarna) and more into a rock sound, Jaworski grabbed one of his former Ich Trola singers along with some instrumentals to work on some of his "old sounding ideas."

Of course, I love this kind of thing. Their ep Zaboban is right up my rockin' ancient music alley.  Heavy drones, close harmonies, badass fiddles, primtive instruments, primal percussion...all the good stuff.  As I wrote in an extended review of his earlier work with Zwiolak a while back it "breathes new life into the bio-metal / heavy folk genre."  Zaboban is cut from the same cloth. The title track cranks out the raw energy of his Ich Trole tracks while "O jednej wesniacze" steadily builds a slow burn  to flame just below the "fury" setting. "Nie wiem" comes down like medieval thrash.  If I remember my limited Polish correctly, that means "I don't know."

While I am excited to hear what Jaworski cooks up for the full length Delira i Kompany disc, I was also quite intrigued by another new project he wrote me about.

Do you get the idea this guy has limitless music energy?  Check.

Unbounded curiosity about ancient instruments? Check.

The chops to make them all rock hard? BIG check!

So in the new projects he's all over the ancient bowed harp relative known as the gusli, more specifically the Gdansk gusli as found in archeological digs dating it the 13th centruy or so.  Going forward in time, the gusli became the ancestor of the kantelle in Finland, the kannel in Estonia and the talharpa in Sweden.  Going back in time - well, how far back to do you want to go?  The gusli is only a few steps removed from the lyres of the Byzantines, Greeks, Egyptians, Sumerians.  It's all in when players started to bow rather than pluck the strings.  Notice the "window" in the instrument pictured here.  The player reaches through to stop some of the strings while others functioned as drones.  This type of gusli had four or five strings, probably of horse hair or gut (that's animal intestines to you and me.)

This thing is a true folk intrument, folks.  Easily constructed and transported, it didn't have the resonating sound to fill a great hall, but was the perfect accompaniment to singing or dancing in a smaller space.

So Jaworski reconstructed himself a gusli of the Gdansk style and found "it was like a link I was really looking for" to the time of the Baltic Vikings as well as a link between Polish and Nordic archaic music.  He connected a while back with Swedish/Estonian bowed harp (hiiurootsi kannel) player Sofia Joons and they are going nuts discovering the shared musical histories of their respective cultures. 

Joons' name may be known to Garmarna fans as from her Strand...Rand album from the early 2000's on which Emma Hardelin contributed guest vocals. (One of the few recordings in which Emma actually sings harmony,  folks!) It's a pristine, sparse collection of hymns and folk tunes that evokes the timeless pattern of waves on the empty Baltic Sea beach of its title. Fans of Rosenberg 7 or Triakel would eat it up.  Joons now lives in the Estonian city of Viljandi and directs a folk music school there.  The city also hosts a large folk festival every year. 

The Estonian piece of the equation is that it is likely the only country (other than Finland, Joons writes, saying her Finnish Bowed harp pals willnot like to be left out) with an uninterrupted history of bowed harp playing and construction. Although 19th church officals frowned on the intrument as a party and dancing instigator (and the problem with that is ?) , it survived into the early 20th century. Joons wrote me thatthe first tunes were writen down in  1903/4 by Otto Andersson.  A more recent brush with extinction was the Soviet policy of homogenizing  folk traditions and determining a single folk instrument and style for a region.  The gusli and other bowed harps were almost lost, but eventually old men who still remembered how to play and build the instrument were allowed to take up their old bows and harps.  Luckily recordings of these guys were made and the tunes survived.

Joons and Jaworski are excited about a future collaboration including their ancient bowed harps as they found so many similarities in Polish and Estonian folk music.  He told me "I'm sure the Nordic Music in a future will mean not only the Scandinavian one."

I'm sure whatever they cook up will employ Joons' exquiste clear vocals and the ringing sound of the bowed harp.  Knowing Robert, I expect some of it will have some kind of amp hooked up to the old bits of wood and gut!

In a slightly related aside, all this gusli research fits so nicely with the Viking tales in Red Orm or The Longships, a Swedish work of fiction from about 1950 that I finished last week.   A new edition of the book is coming out with an introduction by Michael Chabon about how he loves this kind of classic adventure tale (Yeah!  His con-men heroes from Gentlemen of the Road were probably operating about 1000 miles south of Red Orm during the same time period!) 

Anyway, just think about how gusli remnants have been found in Baltic Viking remains in Gdansk (major port),  or Novgorod ( on the river portaging trade(or pillaging?) route from Gotland to Byzantium.  Red Orm and his crew are lugging their ships across the portages to get to the Dnieper River and points south toward the Black Sea in search of some buried gold and plunder; probably real Vikings from that time brought back these instruments.

OK, I'm already digressing, but how can I possibly resist this musical tidbit from the Wiki article on these trade routes.  "Two music albums coincidentally released in 2007 deal with fictional journeys down the trade route, heavy metal band Rebellion's Miklagard — The History of the Vikings Volume 2 and folk metal band Turisas' The Varangian Way.   (You have to go to the Wiki lin above for these links to work.)

Can we talk concept album, please, Ms. Fevers?

Just in case you cannot resist, and I couldn't,  here's a link to a live 2008 version of "The Dnieper Rapids" from Turisas. Love the face paint; the whole look is rather Uruk-hai, no? But almost 800,000 "Battle Metal" fans can't be wrong.

Time for bed.  This is getting silly.

September 7: Here's part two, for all you fans of weird old stringed instruments.  Robert took time to answer another set of emailed questions about construction of his gusli, so I'll just reproduce that exchange here for anybody interested.  Please pardon any unique spellings or syntax, OK?