Polish Gems - Part I

MC #33 | Hania Rani, Mary Komasa, BOKKA

Hey Friends,

Today I want to share with you some of my current favorite polish artists.

Tap a button below and hop straight to the playlist…

…or stay with me here for a couple of minutes.

As most of you possibly know, I am Polish 🇵🇱, and I have lived in Warsaw, the capital of Poland, since I was born in 1991. I love this city very much and I’m proud of its history. Two days ago we’ve been celebrating the 78th anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising. As every year, exactly at 5 p.m., we all stop for a moment to mark the "W" Hour with sounds of sirens and car horns. This way we pay tribute to the heroes of 1944.

Seventy-eight years ago, on August 1st, at 5 p.m., about 50 thousand insurgents grabbed their weapons to fight with German occupants. The Warsaw Uprising was the biggest underground military operation in German-occupied Europe. It lasted for over two months (it was planned to take only a few days), took thousands of lives, thousands were injured, and rushed out of the city. As revenge, and an act of punishment Hitler's forces decided to systematically destroy the city. Warsaw, the capital of Poland, was almost completely razed to the ground. More than 85% of the historic centre was destroyed by Nazi troops. It took many years to partially restore and rebuild it.

Being in a nostalgic, patriotic mood, I decided to recommend to you some of my favorite polish artists. I carefully selected those who sing in English, so that can be understood globally, without the necessity to translate the lyrics from polish.

This issue is made of various songs and albums of artists I’ve selected. I’ve also prepared a playlist with my favorite songs from those creators.

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💎 Hania Rani

Hania Rani is a brilliant, award-winning musician, pianist, composer, and vocalist.

haniarani

A post shared by pianist | composer (@haniarani)

She was born in 1990 in Gdańsk, located in the north of the country on the sea coast, at the mouth of the Vistula river in Poland 🌊.

Hania’s father was an architect and he passed down the love for arts to his daughter. She’s been playing classical piano since the age of seven 🎹. Experimenting with different styles of music during her twelve years of music school, and then studying in Warsaw and Berlin, she was “mixing Chopin & Schostakovitch with Dave Brubeck and Moderat”.

So, what inspires her now?

On the list of her music inspirations, we can find many famous names like Max Richter, Miles Davis, Nils Frahm, Agnes Obel or bands like Portico Quartet, GoGo Penguin, Radiohead, and The Beatles. What inspires her are also places that she has lived and visited. 

“It’s about the feeling, the general atmosphere, sometimes about memories. Moving to Berlin (where you have the freedom to be yourself), exploring Iceland and the wild mountains in Bieszczady, South-East Poland, all changed me as a person, so I guess, also affected me as an artist.”

But visual arts, colors, and images are the most important factors to stimulate her mind. What comes first when she’s creating she calls a “sound image”.

"I find that what really inspires my music is not the music, but all the other things. I take inspiration for the form of my own pieces from architecture and design. Then I translate this “foreign” language, to my own music and the outcome is way more interesting for me than just getting it from the music."
(…)
"I can really feel the colours, the mood – just like with photography. If the image is strong enough, sounds come along very quickly, trying to build the right image stuck in my head. The music fills the space, the music brings the new worlds, new spaces."

Her music is minimalistic, soothing, and refreshing. It evolves and from album to album her progress is more and more visible.

Give your ears some pleasure and listen to:

• Esja - Hania’s 10-track debut album from 2019, named after the volcanic mountain range near Reykjavík in Iceland

• Home (2020) - a beautiful, 13-track album with various compositions, both pure instrumentals and with her vocals. Watch a breathtaking music video to my favorite track on this album.

Open on Spotify

Composing film and theater music is a big part of Rani's life. Her music can be found in a bunch of films, animations, theatre plays, and other projects.

• Music for Films and Theatre (2021)

If you like the sounds of cello, you must check out the album Hania made together with cellist and composer Dobrawa Czocher:

• Inner Symphonies (2021)

It also seems like Hania Rani feels very good on stage. She looks natural in the atmosphere of the live concerts. I found it hypnotizing to watch how Hania performs. Enjoy the video of her live session for Cercle.

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💎 Mary Komasa

Mary Komasa is a Berlin-based singer, multi-instrumentalist and a composer who loves writing film scores. Her music is deep, raw, and powerful. Most of her songs are piano-based or built on dark electronic sound.

marykomasa

A post shared by Mary Komasa (@marykomasa)

Mary was born in Poland. She grew up in Warsaw surrounded by her creative family of artists. Her father is an actor, and her mother used to sing gospel. From their early years, she and her siblings were artistically inclined. Her older brother Jan is a widely known director, screenwriter, and producer. Szymon, her twin brother, is an opera singer, and her younger sister Zofia is a stylist and a costume designer.

In the interview for V Magazine Mary said:

I did my first recording sessions when I was 4 years old. I started to sing as soon as I started to speak. Later on, when I went through all the steps of the music education, I began to compose. From that moment on, it became crystal clear that this is going to be my life. Now I do all of it. I write my own songs and compose film music together with my husband Antoni. The plan I had as a small girl worked out pretty well for me! 

She began by playing the organ and the harpsichord at school. Then in Paris, she studied opera singing and did some modeling. After that, she moved to Berlin to go to jazz school. It all laid a strong foundation for who she is as a musician today.

Now the biggest inspirations for her are films and specific scenes of them. She likes making moldboards, watching movies, and listening to classical music in her creative process.

She debuted with the self-titled album "Mary Komasa" in 2015 and conquered the hearts of listeners with her strong voice and, Fever Ray-ish / early Lana del Ray vibe. Listen to the most popular and significant track on this album, called "Come".

Open on Spotify

The most discussed, and controversial Mary’s song is definitely "Lost Me", because of the music video directed by her brother in which famous polish model Anja Rubik stripped herself naked. It is meant to be symbolic.

"It’s about the feeling of being trapped (in your own state of mind, relationship, career or surroundings), desperate to find a way to break through. It’s about finding the inner courage to blow up the system, which is very often something that we build up in our own head. You have to discover your own existence, place on earth, identity. It’s about a liberation from the fear of judgement."

Anja Rubik for models.com

Judge for yourself if it’s too strong and shocking. For me, it’s just a piece of well-made art.

Open on Spotify

"Pull Me Up" is another of Mary’s beautiful, moving songs. But this one was made to crush pandemic barriers and show our need for closeness.

"With this song I knew from the very beginning that I wanted to create something sensual and light. I wanted it to feel as if you kiss someone and then you go on and on but in a very delicate way. What we missed the most during recent time was the sensation of a simple human touch. I wanted this song to provide it to my listeners."

Source: V Magazine

I find it very sad that the music video to this song is widely criticized in Poland by all those homophobes, racists, and conservatives. I wish my fellow country persons were more tolerant and worldly. The image of people of the same sex kissing shouldn’t make people appalled. The view of people of different color shouldn’t be a problem. The delicate nudity shouldn't be commented on so fiercely.

Open on Spotify

In 2019 Mary released an album "Disarm" with avant-garde orchestral, ambient sounds, progressive electronics, synthesizers, and electro-pop vibes.

Open in Spotify

Can’t wait for her next creations.

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💎 BOKKA

Bokka is a band of four anonymous, masked musicians. It’s impossible to put them in a box of one music genre. They make all sorts of music - electronic, pop, synth-pop, rock, alternative. Sometimes it’s heavy and dark, sometimes more nostalgic and calm. But it’s always a bit disturbing, psychedelic, and thought-provoking.

bokkamusic

A post shared by BOKKA (@bokkamusic)

I love how the band explained their facelessness in the interview they gave to pias.com:

SO, BOKKA, WHAT ARE THE ADVANTAGES OF CONCEALING YOUR IDENTITY, OF BEING A FACELESS BAND?

1. You can freely mingle with the festival crowd after the show. That is a true blessing. You can peacefully enjoy watching other artists perform, criticize them, swear out loud, tell someone to p*ss off, and not worry that you will read about it on the internet the next morning.

2. Music comes first. It doesn’t matter who you are or how you look. Music is powerful, it does something to your brain and heart. It doesn’t need any additions. It’s enough in itself.

3. The unknown is thrilling. When something is covered, your imagination goes wild. We like to think that our fans have a great collection of beautiful images of us in their minds.

4. No one bothers you. If you experienced fame, you'd find out that it can be exhausting and distracting. Being faceless you rarely give interviews and don’t have to be in places just to be seen. You have much more time, and there are just so many things to watch online, right?

5. It looks cool. Our masks are small pieces of art. We could write about the inconveniences of playing in them, but we would come to the same conclusion: we just look so cool that it doesn’t matter that we can barely see and that getting onto the stage we probably look like a bunch of geriatrics...

They debuted in 2013 with a song called "Town of Strangers"…

Open in Spotify

…and then released a whole album called "Bokka".

People fell in love with the band, and its unique sounds, so they went on tour and conquered the stages at many events across Europe.

In 2015 Bokka came back with their second album "Don’t Kiss And Tell". Check out the music video to the album’s best-known song - "Let It".

This is where
You say stop
Take a breath
Take a pause
You will reap
What you sow
But tonight
Let it flow

Sometimes it's too late to go back
Some things have to hurt to realize
The sun keeps rising
And you have to keep on trying

If you liked previous tracks, feel free to give a listen to Bokka’s newer albums:

• "Life on Planet B" (2018)

• "Roll Down The Hill" EP (2020)

• "Blood Moon" (2020) with sounds of orchestral strings, flutes, oboes, and bassoons - check out the short-film down below. It’s a moving tale of a father who tries to save his daughter from the bitter truth of the world coming to an end…

Open on Spotify

My favorite song by Bokka is "What A Day". With this one, I’ve been introduced to this band. It was a long time ago, in the year that I moved out from my parents to live on my own.

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Ok, so that’s all for today.

I’ll come back to you with more polish sounds in two weeks.

Let me know which of the musicians mentioned by me resonated with you the most, and if you know and listen to any different polish artists. It would be awesome to know.

Have a great day!

Yours,

Stygi