Daj Ognia - Przednówek

1. Puchery
2. Oj czemuż
3. Oberek na pieńku
4. Nieszczęśliwy
5. Orkan na ugorze
6. Siwy koń
7. Plebioda
8. Woda gore
9. Módir min i kvi, kvi
10. Zmarły człowiecze
11. Okrutnik 

Przednówek (eng. Scarcity) is the
most difficult time between barren
winter and first harvest, when among
hunger and anxiety about the future
there is a spark of desperate joy,
and one seeks hope between other people.
In this liminal time, people gather
together and share visions of
abundance, that which had ended
and that which will come.

-----
“Now I do know the spring is upon! Birds sing, flowers blossom, and starving folk cry”
Maria Konopnicka "O krasnoludkach i sierotce Marysi"

First snowdrifts grow thin, and with them stocks gathered for winter as well.
The hunger wanders through fallows, peeking through windows into people’s households.
Months of belt-tightening turn into months of teeth-clenching.
Apart from food, we lack hope.
Many get driven out of bed by fever to roam the woods and muddy fields naked, pursued by their own phantoms.

Spring?
“Spring!” they call desperately, crushing the last eggs, brittle and musty, to appease Her.
“Spring?” they ask, collecting the void trapped in snares.
It appears that the animals survived through Shrovetide only to be human’s companion in their misery.
So wind can play on protruding ribs.
So folk can be reminded that Flower Lady is never in a rush to give away Her gifts.

Spring.

Muddy thaw breaks the hardened soil free and casts away old, cracked ice.
Yet the thaw cannot melt the hands clotted into fists.
Nor can it wipe off the frost from listless eyes.

And so we sit, we sit helplessly together.

And as we sit the silent chamber presses the impotence into our souls. It keeps pressing our chests, pours down like melted snow, and kills one’s breath.
And as we sit breathless, sobbing turns into a hollow, malicious laugh, and then into a ribald and merry cackle, the more ribald and coarse the emptier is the chamber, the emptier is one’s belly, the emptier is this Scarcity.

And this laugh, this senseless insanity, keeps us fed, it appears so, as we are starved and hollow like broken eggshells. In those shells our cheerful sob and desperate laughter keep echoing like in a church.

Anna Sitko - voice;
Michał Górka - tagelharpa, mandola, flute;
Wit Rzepecki - strakharpa, bagpipes, Novgorod gusli;
Agnieszka Oramus - santoor, frame drum, darabuka, baraban, percussions
Michał Biel - frame drum, baraban, bones, percussions

Recorded by Krystian Gajewski 2022/2023
Mixed and mastered by Mariusz Szwugier 2023
Arts and design: Norka Katarzyna Niedźwiecka (Belanorqua), Michał Biel 

Daj Ognia 2024
format: CD, ecopack