Flugery Lvova & Buchach: Tenth Spring29 April - 1 May 2012. During those days the Flugery Lvova & Buchach / Weathervanes of Lviv & Buchach Ethno-Jazz Festival has been celebrating its tenth spring. Three days in the courtyard of the Lviv City Hall - nonstop music, dancing and joy.
In case you had not any possibility to join the Festival ‘physically’, you could experience that event through pictures and verbal report.
NOTE! neither video, photos or descriptions are able to substitute your presence at a festival
Flugery Lvova & Buchach DAY 1
 The first day was opened by the Free Breath band (the participant of previous festivals). After four years of its existence the band has made a significant progress, and this year it enjoyed the audience with the light and driving programme. As usually, the band tended to funk, but that time the musicians somewhat ignored genre canons and tried to ‘invent’ their own music. An ethno-jazz festival (like the Flugery) encourages the appropriate sound; thus the band was joined by a percussionist, and the compositions were enriched with folk themes. In the middle of the programme the sound was enhanced by a saxophone, trumpet and a vocalist.
 AtmAsfera – Kyiv band used to experiment with styles each new album. They started with art rock, then they implement jazz and this year the musicians presented the programme on the verge of dream pop and world music. As it’s really difficult to define the style that includes a sweet female vocals, a hypnotic flute, an ‘otherworldly’ darbuka , unpredictable keys, Oriental melodies and (occasionally) a kitchen pot functioning as percussion. Sometimes their music was inviting for meditations; sometimes it was like a soundtrack for a fantasy computer game; sometimes – like a ritual dance of cannibals from Hollywood films; and sometimes (due to the combination of an unexpectedly militant flute and a wild percussion) it was drawing pictures of battles between Hellenes and barbarians.
 The Tsigunz Fanfara Avantura Polish brass band consisted of a clarinet, two saxophones, trumpet, trombone and a percussion amused the audience with jazz- spiced Gypsy-Balkan melodies. That ‘wedding-funeral’ orchestra was playing with melodies encouraging the audience to a crazy dance and then – to a dulcet melancholy sorrow, and in a short time - again to an elated revel.
The headliner of the first day was an unsurpassed (as usual) DakhaBrakha band. The devoted audience has overcrowded the space near the stage and harked to the sounds of the ingenious ‘author’s’ shamanism. The band presented mostly compositions from the third studio album Light
From the start deeply grounded on ethnic roots, now the musicians are far away from the ‘ground’ and they are gravitating to their own-built cosmos based on no longer a folk but on a private energy. Their aura and their complicated, atypical sound (almost all the programme was sung to the accompaniment of a pair of accordions and a cello) have managed (with ease) to keep the audience in tension from the first note to the last one. The sound of the band became even more eclectic; the authentic and stylized melodies were added by unexpected elements of trip-hop, ambient, English vocal recitative; the arrangements became more minimalistic.
Flugery Lvova & Buchach DAY 2
 The second day was launched (instead of the declared in the programme Angela Gaber Trio - the Polish musicians hadn’t arrived because of problems with documents) by the Yoriy Kloc Lviv band. The quartet represented by a wheel lyre/ hurdy gurdy, a violin, an acoustic guitar and drums performed own arrangements of authentic folk songs. The band is famous for its record-active concert activity, sometimes it holds a couple of gigs at a night; so the programme was well known to most of the audience. It lasted over an hour, but the musicians have managed to make the ‘lifeless’ audience to dance (gained experience at weddings).
 The DagaDana, no less distinguished band, represented by Dana Vinnytska (vocals, keyboards), Daga Gregorowicz (vocals, electronics, special effects) and Marcin Pospieszalski (double bass, bass guitar). The Flugery Lvova festival was included in their international tour alongside with a number of cities in Ukraine and Moldavia. As usually the trio performed songs in Ukrainian and Polish from different albums focusing on the last one - Dlaczego nie. By the way, Daga has surprised the audience with her quite fluent Ukrainian - not only in songs, but even in announcements in between. The audience greeted the band enthusiastically and warmly. But when Daga (known for her love of ‘sounding’ children's toys) distributed the audience "rury" - colored plastic pipes whistling while twirling over your head – the followership was captured totally. The musicians emphasized that comparing Polish and Ukrainian folklore they had found many similar songs that differed only in language.
 The meditative DagaDana was followed by the sprightly Pushkin Klezmer Band ( accordion, clarinet, trombone, drums and bass). The bass was represented by Mark Tokar, a famous Ukrainian free-jazz contrabassist. The musicians emphasised that they performed music created in Ukraine, although it could hardly be associated with Ukrainian music. Moldovan-Odessa-Jewish melodies with their openness and lightness have caused a genuine excitement. Suddenly the air saturated with the aromas of sea, wine and fish; the audience rushed to the non-stop dance. Klezmer (an ‘everyday ’musical tradition of the Eastern European Jews) has influenced not only urban romance but also (through immigrants) jazz culture. So, the presence of klezmer music at the ethno-jazz festival was quite appropriate. The band performed both popular melodies (including the classical Russian chanson Murka - the ‘authentic’ song had no criminal connotations) and unknown to the audience Romanian and Moldovan folk music.
The final chord of the evening - the performance by the Tolhaje Polish ethno-rock band (usual solo, bass guitars and vocals were joined by wheel lyre/ hurdy gurdy and electronic percussion). The band is inspired by the musical tradition of the Boykos and Lemkos – ethnic groups living in Bieszczady before 1947, musical culture of South Eastern Poland and ethnic groups of modern-day Ukraine. The band has demonstrated that a wheel lyre usually used only as an accompaniment (‘orthodox’ folk bands apply hurdy gurdies only for one-two notes) could became an appreciable solo instrument. It has provoked a new burst of energy and the whole City Hall courtyard was transformed into a dance floor. It’s really a pity the band encored only once: the audience was ready to dance at least half the night more.
But when Marta Bilska, an unchallenged presenter of the Festival, reminded of the forthcoming next morning Get Up! With HYCH Orchestr concert-happening, the audience has obediently dispersed. But doubtfully all went home to sleep.
GET UP!
 The traditional Festival’s Get Up! morning concert-happening was conducted without the accustomed Mertvyi Piven band but with a young but a very potential band (the third day has proved it) – the HYCH Orchestr. Both the audience and the musicians were not sure concerns the results of the concert; it’s really not easy to maintain the ritual established by their predecessors- legends of Lviv rock. But the first minutes have shown that there were no reasons for misgivings, and we all were present at the birth of a new local music cult. After all, the ‘mustachesed’ adience itself has contributed greatly to the wonderful mood - any sort of mustaches (HYCH symbol): natural, glued or painted granted the right to obtain discount tickets. But besides mustaches the musicians and their music have managed to create an atmosphere like the early Woodstock festivals could boast of. Currently their music is still somewhat patchy - sometimes it impresses with its penetrating hippie sincerity; sometimes it sounds like a beach bossa nova; now it amuses with the exquisite arrangements for eight people and then - it is like a bard music for gatherings around the fire. But the band has its own charisma and drive, good lyrics and professionalism. We could wish the guys only one thing – a professional producer assisting them to reach the level they are worth of.
Flugery Lvova & Buchach DAY 3 The continuation or rather the finish of the festival was started at 5:00 pm. The Dzyga Jazz Quartet for the first time performed as the quintet - the band was joined by the bass guitarist Roman Ivanchyshyn, and his composition opened the Flugery Lvova & Buchach last day. Due to the presence of a bass, the band finally sounded more ‘standard’, as there was no need for Arkadiy Orekhov (piano) to play a bass part; though he always did it more than skillfully and that was a sort of the band’s brand.One more specific peculiarity of the band’s sound – its exclusive polyphonic character: almost always each part of each instrument possesses a horizontal dimension, and even in a concrete moment being an accompaniment it may be considered to be a self-sufficient melody line.
 The second band presenting the third day of the Festival was the Vinipuz Mob Kyiv quartet and its carefully thought-out but driving urban funk set. Their rich experience (15 years) and top professional sound caught your ear at once. Audibly, qualifiedly, vigorously – though funk could hardly encourage dances, the audience finally yielded to the pressure of the band’s drive and rushed to hoof.
The exhausted bodies had the chance to relax only while the Project Grzegorz Rogala Polish-Ukrainian-Israeli band’s performance. The Project was represented by the Polish trombonist Grzegorz Rogala and Israeli saxophonist Sagit Zilberman involving the bassist Wojciech Pulcyn and the drummer Igor Hnydyn (the last one participated in two consecutive bands). The P.G. R. creativity is focused on Jewish folk motifs and klezmer music involved in jazz arrangements and enriched by Latin melodies (like rumba). Despite the inspired by such "hot" motifs music, the band presented surprisingly gentle, delicate sound and minimalistic arrangements. Their music is melodic and touching, a little sad and thoughtful (in case of your ‘watchful’ ear). A perfect ground for reflections but not for festive entertainments.
 The X Flugery Lvova & Buchach Festival approached its end to the accompaniment of its darling, ‘relative’ and indispensable ShockolaD band with the presentation of the World new album. The album was released a few weeks before the Festival and it revealed the completely formed ethno-jazz sound refined by ‘global’ folk melodies and rhythms interwoven into the arrangements of Ukrainian folklore. "Our music is powerful due to its mighty melodics, African music - due to its rhythm. It’s very interesting for us to observe the results of such combination. But we never mix them artificially - sometimes they are just naturally interlacing” (Anastasia Litvinyuk, the ShockolaD keyboardist). The performance’s apogee – the musicians and their instruments have joined the audience (or vice versa?).
Thus, the Festival was crowned in co with overall singing and dancing (like each good festival should be ended with); that was an action-happening without boundaries between musicians and the audience, united by the joyous burst of music.
The X Flugery Lvova & Buchach / Weathervanes of Lviv & Buchach Ethno-Jazz Festival is over.
Next year new and unexpected impressions are guaranteed.
Text: efandy
Editorial ‘interventions’: Yurko VovkoGon
Photo: Kostya Smolyaninov, Yuriy Dvornik
Festival General Sponsor - Buchach Cognac
Festival Organisers: Dzyga Art Association, NGO Virmenska 35, Polish Institute in Kyiv, Consulate General of Poland in Lviv, NGO Institute for Contemporary Art
Festival Hotel - Reikartz Hotels & Resorts
Festival Beer - Lvivske
General Media Partner - TRC Lux
Contact:
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
|
© 2012 flugery