In early 1995, I started a band with my friends in our hometown of Tomaszów Mazowiecki. Called Ziemniaki (Potatoes), it was inspired by Polish 1980s punk and new wave bands. My brother Andrzej became our vocalist. Since he was just eight years old, our lyrics were not socially or politically involved, as they typ ically would be in a proper punk band’s repertoire. Instead, we took our texts “from the primer”.1997 saw the production of our compact cassette Spring. A year later we started working on new songs, which remained unrecorded, though, since the band was discontinued in 1999. I took up studies at the Academy of Music in Łódź. Several years later Andrzej also started his (non-musical) studies in Cracow. I became a composer of so-called contempo rary music, while Andrzej was proving more and more successful in thefolk-punk scene (Hańba!) and in the children’s music scene (Czereśnie).

In 2021, I and my brother were invited by NOSPR Katowice to perform a concert in the “Family Band” series. Andrzej suggest ed that we could revive our teenage project for that occasion. The PIOSENKI band was thus born. It performed Ziemniaki’s songs from the 1990s – not in their original postpunk form, though, butrearranged for bouzouki, piano, bass clarinet, and percussion. We invited Michał Górczyński and Paweł Nowicki from Kwartludiumensemble to join us. The band’s first concert took place on 13 March 2022, and our debut album came out in the same year, winning aFryderyk nomination. Our second release, recorded two years later, drew on the repertoire of an other punk band in which I had performedwith my brother in the 1990s – Praca Domowa (Homework).

The idea of including a concert for children in the programme of the Little Warsaw Autumn emerged from conversations with Anna Kierkosz a year ago. Not a quasi-opera, a spectacle, or an educational project, but a concert of songs pure and simple, conceived as a closed whole in which the child audience could actively participate. At last year’s Warsaw Autumn adults had this kind of entertainment provided by Hańba!, sowhy not hold one for children? No such concert has been part of the Little Warsaw Autumn to date. Brand new songs have been written for thisoc casion. Anna Kierkosz’s lyrics supplied the leitmotif and a uni fying subject matter. We have additionally invited accordionist Eneasz Kubit and countertenor Michał Sławecki to join us for this concert.

Artur Zagajewski

A family may sometimes look like this:

A family photo
This is mum,
this is dad
and this is my brother
smiling happily
It’s me next to him.

Hush, little baby, don’t say a word,
mama’s gonna buy you a mockingbird.
This is mum,
here is dad
and these are my brother and me.

This is mum,
this is dad
and this is my brother,
he’s fallen asleep on mum’s knees.
So hush, everyone, hush now.

If that mockingbird don’t sing,
Mama’s gonna buy you a diamond ring.
This is mum,
brother and dad
and here, it’s me.

If that diamond ring turns brass,
Mama’s gonna buy you a looking glass.
This is mum,
with my sister in her belly,
dad, my brother, and me!

But sometimes it may look altogether different:

I talk to the Moon

I lift my eyes
to the silver disc above.
I know him well and I like
meeting him by night.
Suddenly I can see
that he’s sending me
rays of light, shaped like question marks.

And the Moon in the sky
asks me whether I know
where his family might be.
Could he find them in Turkey or China?
And is the Earth really his mum?
He’s asking, bewildered and puzzled:
Where could his dad have gone?
Is having a brother good fun?

I look up again, the new Moon
will rise in the east quite soon
while Jupiter and a hundred moons are rejoicing.
I can answer all of his doubts,
tell him where he’s come from
and why he is alone.
I try to cheer him up
when the next month, again:

He asks me whether I know
where his family might be.
Could he find them in Turkey or China?
And is the Earth really his mum?
Where could his dad have gone?
Is having a brother good fun?

This is what this concert is about. Naturally, first and foremost, about relations, and about the emotions that are inextricably connected with them.

Anna Kierkosz