Label: Macefizelj
Release date: December 2016
Production: Dejan Lapanja
Album length: 46.40 min
Genre: Ethno / Folk
Stone walls, living monuments to the days of long ago, mercilessly whipped and chiseled over the centuries by the sharp, howling gusts of the bora; dried stalks of upright meadow oat-grass, heralds of extensive, which is to say traditional, farming of mown fields and dry meadows; a sky stuffed with heavy clouds; orchards of gnarled, twisted, yet stubbornly sturdy local varieties. All in one: a place that the folk of northern Primorska have shaped over centuries into a brutally hard and impenetrable format of defiance, one that any lazy-heeled desk jockey from the Ljubljana tax district will break their teeth on in no time.
Unbelievable. Right at the tail end of the year, the Slovenian music scene got one of the most insightful and deepest records this year’s ethno/folk scene here has produced. I’m talking about Bakalina, the duo of Renata “Lapatarca naz Panikve” Lapanja (accordion) and Jani “Križarjew s Čadrga” Kutin (vocals).
Bakalina, which is what a larger clay vessel used to be called in the Tolmin and Čadrg area, is no stranger on the Slovenian scene anymore. The duo already put out three studio albums, in 2009, 2011 and 2013. All of them rang with the genuine ethno melos of folk tunes that has echoed for centuries and flourishes across the T’min peaks and gorges. That’s how Bakalina took up the traditional heritage of our great-grandfathers’ and forefathers’ folk songs in a thoroughly authentic way, and sparklingly translated it into a distinctive original pulse that is also a present-day reflection of the life of the “little” person in T’min.
The duo’s new studio album, “Španabije,” keeps that vision alive from start to finish. But with one important difference. Bakalina have been hit by the “composer’s rays” of layered musical arranging. In that sense, the album title “španovije” is more than fitting. For the new record, Renata and Jani teamed up with a whole crowd of musicians and invited them to collaborate.
The fruit of that collaboration is a set of nine new original pieces, which the band recorded over a longer stretch than we’re used to from the duo. Over the past three years, and at various locations around Primorska. That way, Bakalina wanted to amplify, as authentically as possible, all the sensuality and emotion of the poetry, written and sung in the authentic “Čadrg-speak” (the Čadrg dialect), with the melos itself. All the songs were played and recorded live, concert-style. In a single take. No joking here. What you hear is what you get. So the very ambience in which the music on this record was played, along with the passion and sensuality brought not only by Kutin with his vocals but by the sum of everyone creating the sonic backdrops and arranging the tracks, gives us a product that couldn’t boast of more genuineness and authenticity.
The melos is often infused with that famous rebellious, marching note, that unrotted, wholehearted pose of fighting for the old cause, with which Jani and Renata have addressed their listeners in the past. But there’s something extra. Every song has its own carefully crafted character. Each one is a clearly finished, neatly packaged story. The previous three albums didn’t announce that so intensely. While listening, they came across first and foremost as a whole. Here, though, the very charisma of each of the nine tracks is extremely expressive, and through the unfolding of nine self-contained stories it reaches the listener much more intensely.
The messages are socially critical and engaged, which you can pick up instantly in songs like Kanc sveta (with an excellent duet of Janez Škof and Jani) and even more intensely in Pagreb Europe (this time in the company of the Slovenian-Italian comradeship of accordionists Accordion Group 4-8-8-16), played right on the Dragonja (the border), which is (immodestly put) the real “rebel” requiem for the year 2016. Here you get Jani’s declarations of unwavering love for his “Styrian girl” (Pamlad, with the gentleness of Dejan Lapanja’s acoustic guitar), and in its second half, especially after the harshly realistic toppling of illusions (Pagreb Europe), the album softens up as it spotlights the wry, high-spirited side of the T’min farm-life pictures in the song about cheesemaking called Krawji rep (Mitja Roner’s vocal coloring is incredible; at first I thought that was Goran Krmac’s tuba) and in the one about the skills of carpentry handiwork (Tišler n sitnca – with a deliberately played “collapse of the system” at the end of the track). The charge keeps flowing in the longing Jesien, and then, right at the close, the album turns especially melancholy and moving, with its emotions cranked up even further. It’s closed out by the two longest songs. The first is Pisma, played this time in the Church of the Holy Spirit in Javorca, announcing the final hour of Slovenian lads before their early departure for a last battle on the Soča Front, from which there is no return. That poignancy is contrastingly strengthened by the integration of Simon Gregorčič’s octet from Kobarida, plus the addition of a flugelhorn, and through a polka-fied waltz it practically “draws live” the departure of the lost Soča boys into a premature grave. This song is a textbook case of graduated compositional development, of unbelievable sensual intensification that through its expression comes across downright “chillingly” real and alive. The gentler and softer your approach in the performance, the more intensely the emotions ring out. The melancholy picked up in the last part of the album is reinforced right at the tail by the song Ka se je dielu sviet, where Bakalina entered the “španovija” with the crew of T’min salamanders Salamandra salamandra. After a good four minutes of the track, the latter twist its format toward an entirely new mood, riding Španabije out to its end through a sensual dialogue of instruments, almost into the adventitious playfulness of progressive rock and ethno.
All other words are superfluous. The visionary, layered musical design of this record is exceptional and downright special. This is a record that will move you, pierce you, shake you to the core and wake you up. Provided you don’t have a heart of stone, of course. It is the fruit of translating the musical magic and poetry of performers who, even in this crazy millennium, where we’re all drunk on the glitz (and misery) of the brave new world, have drifted off somewhere among the stars (and lost touch with solid ground), stayed firmly tied to mother nature and the Earth. At the same time, it’s worth noting that this album carries an incredible note of awakening national consciousness. Don’t forget that the times of enslavement to capital have robbed us of that awareness completely. That’s why I couldn’t credit it with any more genuineness and sincerity. “Španabije” is a record where every single stroke landed in the right spot. It couldn’t work any better than it does. It’s also a moment when the duo Bakalina ambitiously moves toward new challenges of composing and enriching their own artistic language. This path of musical vision is worth sticking with and nurturing in the future too.
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
rating: 10 / 10
Tracklist:
1. Španabije
2. Kanc sveta
3. Pamlad
4. Pagreb Europe
5. Krawji rep
6. Tišler n sitnca
7. Jesien
8. Pisma
9. Ka se je dielu sviet
Bakalina:
Jani Kutin – vocals
Renata Lapanja – accordion
Guest musicians:
Brencl banda – track 1
Janez Škof – accordion, vocals on track 2
Marjan Stanič – percussion on track 2
Dejan Lapanja – acoustic guitar on track 3
Accordion Group 4-8-8-16 – track 4
Zlam ‘n’ Bejž (a ka Mitja Roner) – vocals on track 5
Mateja Gorjup – vocals on track 6
Zvezdana Novaković – harp, vocals on track 7
Oktet Simona Gregorčiča – track 8
Andrea Pandolfo – flugelhorn on track 8
Salamandra salamandra – track 9
