Hańba! was originally conceived as a fictitious street band whose protagonists / members used poetry and itinerant urban-type lineup to stigmatise evil and hatred in the world they inhabited – that of the 1930s and 40s. At the start of the band’s second decade, however, it is already hard to distinguish fiction, poetry, and the historical costume from a tale about the sad and ugly face of modernity. 

Hańba! members are recipients of the Polityka Passport Award “for the surprising effects of musical-literary-political reconstruction that creatively revives the folk and punk formulas while at the same time accurately describing conflicts and threats in today’s Poland.” Hańba!’s other accolades include the Grzegorz Ciechowski Prize (2017) and the Czesław Niemen Special Award at New Tradition Folk Festival (2014). 

The band has performed on stages, streets, and at festivals in the United States, Canada, Australia, Spain, Czechia, Slovakia, Great Britain, Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands, as well as, naturally, throughout Poland in both prominent and little-known places.