Which 10 albums influenced you the most? This is a question that I will ask guests from the world music realm (musicians, producers, organizers, agents...), and I will share their answers to you every two weeks on these pages.
In this edition of the column, I have the honor of having Dunja Knebl as a guest. Dunja is a researcher of Croatian traditional music who has been on the scene for 30 years, she has released more than 20 albums with various collaborators, and her tireless dedication to music is also evident in the fact that in recent months she has released great albums with Zoran Majstorović ("Sonce") and Adam Semijalac ("Moje srce se reskoli") and is currently in the studio recording a new album with Roko Margeta. Between recordings, she took time for Izvorišta and chose 10 artists and their albums that influenced her the most.
The albums (and songs) that are my favourites are those that have not only made the most significant impact on me in my life, but also on me as a (folk) singer, so I will list them in chronological order. They are also the albums I have never grown tired of listening to.
Perhaps the most important thing is the i n t e n s i t y some musicians succeed in creating and transferring to the listener. Of course, we are all different and are not always moved by the same things.
Burl Ives - The Return Of The Wayfaring Stranger (Columbia 1949.)
In my childhood days when living in the USA, I fell under the spell of a voice. It was a very sad but soothing voice that sang about sad people and their sad lives, but somehow it comforted me. It was an early record by Burl Ives we had at home that I could listen to repeatedly, and I learned to sing some of the songs.
The Internet is a wonderful thing we have today, but like all things in this world, it has its good and bad sides. The good thing is that we can listen to all kinds of stuff from all over the world, from different stages in time, and this is amazing. The disappointing thing as to music is that it offers the most commercial and most liked recordings. Most often, only if you know what you're looking for, and if you dig persistently, you will finally find the really good ones. Sometimes you won't.
Burl Ives is a very good example. Although he recorded hundreds of traditional folk songs in the English language, collected folk songs and wrote books on the subject, recorded for the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. (Alan Lomax recorded him singing in 1938), was the first "Wayfaring stranger" with his very popular New York radio show of the same name, many know him today only for his Christmas songs, children songs and several pop songs he reached the charts with, and that is what you get when you enter his name on YouTube.
Joan Baez - Joan Baez (Vanguard 1960.)
Of course, after acquiring the taste for folk songs in general, in my teens I loved Joan Baez and her recordings of traditional folk songs, child ballads, and protest songs. Most of all I liked her early albums/concerts, her beautiful voice, and beautiful guitar accompaniments. She was not the first singer to use the guitar to accompany traditional folk songs, but she certainly made the songs more popular and very beautiful.
Most of all I liked her interpretation of ballads:
Melanie – Beautiful People: The Greatest Hits Of Melanie (Buddha 1999.)
In my teens and twenties I was singing folk songs, singer-songwriters, even some of my own songs, and I was a great fan of Melanie (Safka). It was then I decided not to make singing become my profession, and Melanies's songs played a major role in making this decision. Many of her lyrics touched me deeply , and she wrote about all the things I would have written and sung about had I been as talented. So I let her songs teach me about life, music, and people. It was a period when many were telling me what I should be singing about, and how I should be doing it. I decided I would continue singing for myself and my friends and do it exactly the way I wanted to and felt. I did not want my songs to be "tied in a plastic bag", I did not want my brain to be "picked like a chicken bone", turn "half-insane", try to "find a good book to live in" even if it was probably the only thing I was doing "half-right" (" What Have They Done To My Song, Ma").
Il Nuovo Canzoniere Italiano – Ci Ragiono E Canto (I Dischi Del Sole 1970.)
I still have the record that was on repeat for many years and I never got tired of listening to Italian traditional folk songs that were part of the theatre performance by the legendary Dario Fo: "Ci ragiono e canto". Although I understood only some words in Italian, I somehow felt it all, the changing "seasons" in man's life, and it all sounds magical even today, half a century later. Even though it was mostly performed by actors and professional singers well known for their singing, to me it was an introduction to the raw traditional way of interpreting music that further led me to appreciating traditional singing close to home.
Dina Vierny – Chants Des Prisonniers Sibériens D'Aujourd'hui / Блатные песни (Pathé 1977.)
Although I lived for more than a decade in the Soviet Union and learned many folk songs and songs by singer-songwriters there, the most incredible vinyl I have from that stage of my life is by an extraordinary woman who recorded just one album and is better known as an artist's muse and model who became a highly respected French art dealer, collector and museum director. Most often her singing is not mentioned in her different biographies. Born as Dina Aibinder into a Jewish family in Kishinev (Moldova), she moved to France with her parents when she was a child, and lived in France for the rest of her days. She was Aristide Maillol's muse for the last ten years of his life, and afterwards spent her life in preserving and presenting his works. She learned "goulag" songs when travelling to Russia as an art dealer, and was forbidden to go there after the album was released in 1975 (in France). Perhaps she was so authentic in her interpretations of the songs because she herself had been imprisoned by the Gestapo for six months following an arrest in Paris in the II World War years. Among other things, when living with Maillol in his villa near Marseille, she guided hundreds of refugees over the Pyrenees and out of France. Initially acting alone, Dina Vierny connected with both the French Resistance and the famed networks of Varian Fry.
Kries - Kocijani (Kopito 2008.)
In 1993 my life changed completely because I finally did want to sing in public the songs I discovered in books - collections of Croatian folk songs I didn't know existed. There they were - hundreds of songs I had never heard before because many had never been recorded. Since then I have been singing traditional Croatian folk songs in many different arrangements with many different musicians, trying to draw attention to the fact that they exist, and to inspire others to sing them. My favourite interpretations from those early days of my singing "career" are those of Mojmir Novaković when he was leading singer of Legen, and all the way to present times. Together with his band Legen (now Kries) and Lidija Bajuk we began re-interpreting Croatian folk songs, recorded a joint album, and have continued to perform separately to date. Mojmir's renditions are a combination of his ancient-sounding voice (one has the impression of listening to an old man coming from centuries ago), and some traditional instruments combined with modern ones in a style that is contemporary but also takes us many centuries back in time and to ritual-sounding music.
Razni izvođači - Da si od srebra, da si od zlata - izvorni glazbeni folklor Hrvatske (Jugoton 1974.)
It was only when I myself began singing in public that I began listening to recordings of Croatian traditional music interpreted by people coming from rural parts, and music that is not always easy to listen to. Strangely enough, the Italian record of Dario Fo's theatre performance trained my ears to like such music.
Zuzana Homolová – Slovenské Balady (Pavian/Ariola 1995.)
In the late Nineties I began research work on Croatian murder ballads for a new album, but actually recorded it only in 2017. I came to know Zuzana Homolova through a friend. She is a Slovakian singer who had released an album of Slovakian murder ballads, and I liked her style very much. There was nothing dramatic in her interpretations of the scary sad songs with sad endings, but once again I was taken by the simplicity that conveyed deep emotions and made one feel for the people whose destinies were told.
Mariana Sadovska - Songs I Learned In Ukraine (Global Village 2001.)
When I played and recorded with my band Kololira, I loved the hurdy gurdy as part of the band's sound . We were all very sad when Martin, our hurdy gurdy guy, left the band to go and work in Germany. Pure coincidence (there are no coincidences, they say) led me and my computer to find Mariana Sadovska on YouTube and to realize that the Indian harmonium she plays is an instrument that could replace the hurdy gurdy, and would go well with the songs I like to sing. I was amazed by her recordings of Ukrainian folk songs to an Indian harmonium accompaniment dating as far back as 2001. Today she is living in Germany and she has collaborated with many artists and toured many countries.
"Long before Dakh Daughters arose to great acclaim with their irrepressibly wanton, avant gardist take on madly askew Cabaret, long before DakhaBrakha broke through with their daringly innovative mix of ancient tradition and hyper-contemporary experiment...—or any number of other Ukrainian artists who have trod down paths of a similar ilk, Mariana Sadovska marked herself off as the pioneering Ukrainian artist who opened up all these trajectories in the first place."
Lankum - False Lankum (Rough Trade 2023.)
A very recently released album is something that surpasses everything I have listened to in my life, and I think it will remain permanently at the top of my list of most loved music. Although I love their earlier albums, the intensity of their live concerts and especially Radie Peat when she sings alone, nothing can compare to Lankum's most recent album "False Lankum":
It was very difficult to make just 10 choices, even 15, but these are the 5 following the 10:
Adam Semijalac (Tanac za crnega vraga), Nico (with or without The Velvet Underground), Dakha Brakha, Warsaw Village Band, Maria Mazzotta
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