We have a trouble with songs. On the one hand, each of us has their favourite tunes or hits. On the other, the genre has been rejected by the so-called new or contemporary music circles. Admittedly some composers continue to write songs, but only occasionally and, so to speak, “on the side” of their other, “serious” work. These two worlds do not interpenetrate. Polish terminology does not help, either. We have piosenka (“light song”) and pieśń (“art song”), which introduces a clear division or even a hierarchy of two distinct genres. Piosenka is relegated to the role of a lighter and simpler, perhaps even less worthwhile genre, belonging in the sphere of popular music (so again – lighter, simpler, possibly less worthwhile...) This simplified classification is highly questionable and disputable. Though its presence can still be felt today, it can be undermined by comparing examples of so-called “serious” and “light” songs. The issue will then prove to be far from obvious. 

The thought of bringing up this subject at Warsaw Autumn emerged several years ago and later frequently resurfaced until now a suitable moment has come to take it up in the context of the leitmotif of this year’s festival. The initial plan was simple: To invite a renowned ensemble specialising in new music and make them collaborate on the project with a selected group of popular singers and music composers. This idea was soon abandoned, though, since such configurations have cropped up at the festival for many years now, and, besides, the point was not merely to write and perform songs, but to incorporate the broader aesthetic categories that characterise popular music performers. A new concept therefore appeared: To invite an entire band from the popular music scene and ask composers to write songs for such amateur performers. The band needed to represent a highly distinctive aesthetic, sound, and type of expression. Hańba! was chosen as fulfilling all these criteria. Specially for this concert, Grzegorz Uzdański wrote lyrics that unify the whole programme. The songwriter has perfectly captured the band’s rhetorical mode. This time, its austere simplicity is not meant to transport us several decades back, into a different musical era, as this punk-folk band has consistently done before in its own music. Instead, the lyrics are set in present-day reality. This, then, is the context of an unprecedented project – the first-ever Warsaw Autumn concert dedicated to “light” songs. Hańba means “disgrace” – but is it, really? 

Artur Zagajewski, curator of the concert