Warsaw Village Band - Wykorzenienie (2005)

According to the band's creative manifesto, it was formed as a response to mass culture and narrow-mindedness, "which in fact leads to [the] destruction of human dignity." Indeed, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the expansion of the European Union to most of the former Warsaw Pact countries, Poland's economy has grown dramatically, while at the same time ushering in investment by a number of multinational corporations, leading to concerns of globalism and loss of Poland's cultural identity.

Warsaw Village Band was intended to be a response to this trend by exploring Poland's musical traditions and making them relevant to its new capitalist economy. Member Wojciech Krzak has stated that "after the nightmare of Communism, we still have to fight for our identity, and we know that beauty and identity are still in our roots." Krzak has further stated that the band are "trying to create a new cultural proposition for the youth in an alternative way to contemporary show-biz." The band's very name appears to evoke what troubles Krzak about Poland's new capitalism: many large Polish cities do not have suburbs in the traditional sense, leading to unsettling transitions directly from city to field. To this end, in their most recent release, Wykorzenienie (Uprooting), the band traveled throughout Poland to find and record older musicians who still played almost-forgotten styles of music, thereafter incorporating those melodies into new songs and expounding upon them.

Notably, Warsaw Village Band have revived several musical traditions that were all but lost in Poland. The band use instruments rarely heard in modern music: frame drums, the hurdy-gurdy and the suka, a Polish folk fiddle stopped with the fingernails rather than the fingers, similar to the Bulgarian gadulka, the sarangi, or the rebec. The suka was practically unknown to the Polish people until member Sylwia Swiatkowska began to play it in the band's concerts, and, later, on their albums. Additionally, many of the band's vocals are sung in a loud and powerful style remakably like the "open-throated" singing styles in Bulgarian music, called biały glos (white voice). This style of singing was used by shepherds in the Polish mountains to be heard for long distances.

1. Roots: Josef Lipinski 0:19
2. In the Forest 3:31
3. Woman In Hell 2:48
4. At the Front of the Gates 3:31
5. Polka From the Sieradz Region 2:17
6. Matthew (Mateusz) 2:34
7. Roots:Janina Zdrzalik 0:35
8. Let's Play, Musicians! 4:14
9. The Owl 4:43
10. Grey Horse 3:41
11. Roots: Kapela Mariana Pelki 0:37
12. When Johnny Went to Fight in the War 2:47
13. Lament 2:32
14. I Slayed the Rye 4:14
15. Roots: Kazimierz Zdrzalik 0:46
16. Fishie 3:56

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