Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Bakalina
Label: Macefizelj
Released: 2016
Length: 46:40
Rating: 5/5
Stone walls, living monuments to days long gone, mercilessly whipped and chiseled over the ages by the sharp, howling gusts of the bora. Parched blades of upright brome, heralds of extensive, which is to say traditional, farming of mown meadows and dry grasslands. A sky stuffed with heavy clouds. Orchards of gnarled, twisted, yet stubbornly sturdy local varieties. All in one: a landscape that the people of northern Primorska have, over the centuries, forged into a fiercely hard, impenetrable format of defiance, one on which any lanky Ljubljana tax-office type would chip their teeth in no time.
Unbelievable. Right at the tail end of the year, the Slovenian music scene got one of the most perceptive and profound records this year’s ethno/folk pulse 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, the old Tolmin and Čadrg name for a large vessel made of clay, is no stranger to the Slovenian scene. 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 have echoed for centuries and flourished across the T’minsko peaks and gorges. That way, Bakalina very authentically picked up the traditional heritage of our great-grandfathers’ and forefathers’ folk melodies and sparkingly translated it into a distinctive original pulse that is also a present-day reflection of the life of the »little« person in T’minsko.
The duo’s new studio album, titled »Španabije«, keeps that vision across the whole thing. But with one important difference: Bakalina have grown »composer’s rays« of layered musical arranging. In that respect, the album title, a play on »španovije«, is more than telling. For the new record, Renata and Jani teamed up with numerous 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, spread over the last three years and across various locations in Primorska. This way, Bakalina wanted to magnify, as authentically as possible, all the sensuality and emotion of the poetry, written and sung in the authentic »Čadrgščina« (the Čadrg dialect), through the melos itself. All the songs were played and recorded live, in the style of a concert performance. In a single take. No jokes here. What you hear is what you get. So the whole ambience in which the music on this record was performed, along with the passion and sensuality brought not only by Kutin with his vocals but by the sum of all the creators of the sonic backdrops and arrangements, makes for a product that couldn’t boast greater authenticity and genuineness.
The melos is often infused with that famous rebellious, marching-band note of unrotted, heartfelt posturing in the fight for the old justice, the one Jani and Renata have addressed their listeners with before. But there’s something more. Every song carries its own carefully crafted character. Each one is a clearly finished, neatly packaged story. The previous three albums didn’t announce this so intensely. When listening, they came across first and foremost as a whole. Here, though, the very charisma of each of the nine tracks is incredibly strong in what it says, and through the development of nine self-contained stories it touches the listener far more intensely.
The messages are socially critical and engaged, which you pick up instantly in songs like Kanc sveta (with an excellent duet between Janez Škof and Jani) and even more intensely in Pagreb Europe (this time in the company of the Slovenian-Italian accordionist collective Accordion Group 4-8-8-16), played right on the Dragonja (the border), which is (immodestly put) a true »rebel« closer for 2016. Here you get Jani’s confessions of inexhaustible love for his »Styrian girl« (Pamlad, with the delicate acoustic guitar of Dejan Lapanja), and in its second half, especially after the sharply realistic toppling of illusions (Pagreb Europe), the album softens up as it brings out the wry, joyful note of the pulse of T’minsko farm life in songs about cheesemaking, called Krawji rep (Mitja Roner’s vocal coloring is unbelievable, at first I thought that was Goran Krmac’s tuba), and about the skills of carpentry handiwork (Tišler n sitnca – with a deliberately played »collapse of the system« in the outro). The charge continues with the yearning Jesien, and then the album turns especially wistful and moving right at the finish, its emotions cranked up even further. It’s closed out by the two longest tracks. The first is Pisma, played this time in the Church of the Holy Spirit in Jaovorca, announcing the last hour of Slovenian boys before their early departure to a final battle on the Soča Front from which there is no return. This poignancy is contrastingly reinforced by the integration of Simon Gregorčič’s octet from Kobarid, and the addition of a flugelhorn, through a slowed-down waltz, really »draws live« the departure into an early grave of the lost Soča boys. This song is a textbook case of the graded compositional development of incredible sensual intensification, which through its expression feels downright »chillingly« real and alive. The more gently and softly you approach the performance, the more intensely the emotions ring out. The melancholy the album picks up in its last stretch gets a final boost right at the tail by Ka se je dielu sviet, where Bakalina stepped into »španovija« with the crew of T’minsko salamanders Salamandra salamandra. After a good four minutes of the track, the latter twist its format toward a completely new mood as the album »Španabije« fades out to its end, through a sensual dialogue of instruments, almost into the adventurous playfulness of progressive rock and ethno.
All other words are superfluous. The visionary, layered musical design of this record is exceptional and uniquely special. This is a record that will move you, shake you, rattle you to the core and wake you up. Unless you have a heart of stone, of course. It’s the fruit of translating the musical magic and poetry of performers who, even in this mad millennium, when we’re all drunk on the glitter (and misery) of the brave new world and have drifted off somewhere among the stars (and lost touch with solid ground), have 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 age of enslavement to capital has robbed us of that awareness entirely. That’s why I couldn’t credit it with greater authenticity and sincerity. The album »Španabije« is a record where every single stroke has landed in exactly the right place. It couldn’t work any better than it does. It’s also a moment when the duo Bakalina ambitiously moves toward new compositional challenges and the enrichment of their own artistic language. This path of musical vision is worth sticking with and nurturing in the future too.
Bakalina – Pagreb Europe (official video):
Lineup
Jani Kutin – vocals
Renata Lapanja – accordion
GUEST PERFORMERS:
Brencl banda – track no. 1
Janez Škof – accordion, vocals on track no. 2
Marjan Stanič – percussion on track no. 2
Dejan Lapanja – acoustic guitar on track no. 3
Accordion Group 4-8-8-16 – track no. 4
Zlam ‘n’ Bejž (a ka Mitja Roner) – vocals on track no. 5
Mateja Gorjup – vocals on track no. 6
Zvezdana Novaković – harp, vocals on track no. 7
Oktet Simona Gregorčiča – track no. 8
Andrea Pandolfo – flugelhorn on track no. 8
Salamandra salamandra – track no. 9
Production
Dejan Lapanja
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
