Marek Grechuta - The musician who ennobled poets

During his golden period, from 1969 to 1974, Marek Grechuta produced some of the most fertile music on the European scene. Blending folk, classical and jazz, reshaping prog, mixing theatre with the classics of Polish poetry, and anticipating world music, his legacy remains astonishing to this day

by Salvatore Greco, Federico Romagnoli

The days we don't know – An introduction to "poezja śpiewana"

It is not easy to explain a figure like Marek Grechuta. Now considered one of the most important artists in the country's history, he was probably the most popular Polish singer-songwriter. Only Czesław Niemen can match his omnipresence and influence on local culture.

His landmark albums represent a unicum in the musical landscape of the Seventies, but to fully understand them it is necessary to delve into the context against which, and in relation to which, Grechuta developed his personal artistic vision.

What in many countries is simply referred to as the singer-songwriter tradition has, in Poland, generated a peculiar definition, initially born as a synonym but over time revealed to be not entirely interchangeable with the classic Western idea of the term. That of "poezja śpiewana", meaning "sung poetry", is in fact a movement that still carries very specific connotations today.

Taking a step back shows how, in Poland, poetry had taken on, especially in the postwar period, an increasingly important social function, coming to strongly influence the most informed and/or politically active segment of the population. A wave of great poets (Tadeusz Różewicz, Zbigniew Herbert, Stanisław Barańczak, to name just a few) brought that form of expression spreading all the way down to the working class. The reading sessions of these poems came to fill halls and venues across half the country.

Such widespread reach, driven by its unifying role and its power to protest through metaphor, inevitably led to a contamination of the musical world.

The first Polish artists identifiable with the sung poetry movement were Ewa Demarczyk and Wojciech Młynarski, around the mid-Sixties. While the former floated her incredible diction over arrangements drawing on Polish classical music, backed by the work of composer Zygmunt Konieczny and the national orchestra, the latter was instead supported by a jazz combo. The common element was theatricality, which in some way connected them to the school of the chansonnier. Demarczyk was poised and solemn, Młynarski more inclined towards a classy cabaret style, but both aimed to build an aesthetic of storytelling that could move across multiple levels, underlining the words with gestures and mime. It took little time before the music itself began to feel this alteration of the canon. It was with sung poetry that the choruses of Polish music began to rebel, taking on bizarre structures or complex performances, disrupted by vocal tricks, off-kilter metres and sudden instrumental breaks.

Although the two originators were worlds apart, both would go on to exert an enormous influence on the music that followed, injecting it with the ambition of classical music on one hand and the subversiveness of jazz on the other. The two elements soon began to hybridize.

Marek Grechuta was the one who synthesized the formula, projecting those suggestions onto Polish folk tradition with the aim of modernizing it, making it intricate and instrumentally elaborate. So elaborate that it naturally spilled over into prog from the second album onward, without ever giving up showing off its own roots.

This evolution wasn't unique to Grechuta, in truth. The other big name on the local scene, Niemen, also arrived at prog in real time ("Enigmatic" – one of the most important albums in European music – was recorded in 1969). Compared to Grechuta, though, Niemen lacked the narrator-bard component; his singing style was influenced by beat and soul, too far removed from the singer-songwriter tradition. Their positions and roles were different, to the point that today Grechuta is considered the voice of Poland, while Niemen is seen as the father of local rock.

It would nevertheless be wrong to reduce the universe created by Grechuta to a simple parade of poems performed over a backdrop blending folk, jazz and classical music. A restless artist disinclined to repeat himself, at least in his early years, Grechuta bent those ingredients into the most varied shapes, generating multiple reference models.

In his catalogue there are classic songs, there are sketches (which take the form of a song, but exaggerate or truncate some of its features, to the point of deforming it), and there are stretched-out pieces that draw on instrumental virtuosity. While the first two types laid the groundwork for the greatest successes of sung poetry, the third serves a more underground but no less fundamental function, since it ferried the passion for classical music and instrumental refinement into the Polish singer-songwriter tradition, eventually spreading into pop and rock too. A passion that has crossed the decades right up to the present day, and which explains why the technical level of Polish musicians across various fields of popular music is on average higher than that of their English-speaking counterparts.

It is curious, for instance, how classic Polish singer-songwriters never followed the voice-guitar format, and even less so, compared to elsewhere, the voice-piano one. Their songs are often dripping with instruments – violin, accordion, flute, double bass, percussion, small and large orchestras – not to build a wall of sound, but to interweave them in a dynamic and striking way.

The one who came closest to breaking Grechuta's codes, the subversive Jacek Kaczmarski, nonetheless relied on excellent guitar technique and the help of a virtuoso jazz pianist like Zbigniew Łapiński, so that, however bare-bones, his songs still came across as complex and refined.

Biographical notes – The first steps of an icon

Marek Grechuta was born on December 10, 1945 in Zamość, a town in southeastern Poland, and spent his childhood in the village of Chylice, home to barely a thousand souls. There he learned to play piano, under the supervision of the parish organist. In 1958 he returned to Zamość for high school, where he stood out as a model student. Five years later he enrolled in the architecture faculty in Kraków.

For the young man, used to provincial surroundings (if not outright rural ones, given his childhood), it was a turning point: contact with a culturally buzzing circle like Kraków's meant a continuous series of stimuli. There he met Jan Kanty Pawluśkiewicz, a university classmate who was actually far more interested in art than in his studies. Three years older, Pawluśkiewicz immediately fascinated Grechuta, both for his qualities as a musician, capable of making his fingers fly across the piano, and for his ambition. The two soon found themselves leading the cabaret group Anawa, whose name – a mangling of the French expression “En avant” – said it all. The project consisted of performing comic sketches interspersed with songs of their own making, some on original lyrics, others setting classics of Polish poetry to music.

Soon the musical component began to take over from the sketches being performed, and Anawa became a full-fledged band. In 1967 they drew attention at Kraków's student festival, and the following year they were summoned directly to Opole, for the national Polish song festival.

They performed “Serce”, a composition by Pawluśkiewicz with romantic lyrics by the poet and satirist Andrzej Nowicki (not to be confused with the post-punk bassist of the same name).

It was in this way that the general public came to know Grechuta's face and voice, aching, velvety, evocative, yet firm in its delivery, far removed from any whining tone. The response was favourable, and shortly afterwards Warsaw's national radio opened its doors to him, allowing him to record his first tracks.

The first release, a three-song EP, was credited to Marek Grechuta & Anawa, to highlight the element that had struck the public most. It came out in the spring of '69, recorded by a six-piece lineup.

Alongside the two leaders are violinists Tadeusz Kożuch and Zbigniew Wodecki (the latter would go on to pursue a singer-songwriter career a few years later, with excellent results), cellist Anna Wójtowicz and guitarist Tadeusz Dziedzic.

“Serce” is a ballad that alternates spoken word with passionately sung passages, enriching them with vocal counterpoints thick with echo. The absence of a rhythm section doesn't weigh it down, given the dynamics created by the strings, between ostinatos and dancing swirls.

The second side of the vinyl holds two equally important tracks.

One is "Niepewność", a love poem by the 19th-century poet Adam Mickiewicz, set to music by Pawluśkiewicz, whose gentle piano accompanies plucked strings in an attempt to recreate the atmosphere of a bygone era, staying as close as possible to the period in which the verses were written. The icing on the cake is the angelic vocal harmonies of Alibabki, the most important Polish vocal group of all time, who at the time collaborated with almost every major name on the scene.

The other is "Tango Anawa", Grechuta's first original text, a stroke of genius that shows just how immediate the chemistry with Pawluśkiewicz was. While a devilish, dissonant hybrid of jazz and tango clatters away in the background, Grechuta sings verses that are indeed about love, but menacing, cryptic, thick with uncertainty: “Theatre is strange, theatre is unique. Where the meaning lies, where the plot lies, only the devil knows. Pianoforti e mandolini, nel folle tango di Anawa. A woman tells me: it's not possible. A woman tells me: I'm not capable. A woman tells me: it's unbelievable. A woman tells me: it's a joke. What's possible is possible, what can be done can be done, and that woman doesn't know what I feel, while I sing the tango of Anawa”.

Marek Grechuta & Anawa (1970)

At the end of 1969 Wodecki left, joining the group backing Ewa Demarczyk. He was replaced by Zbigniew Paleta, an equally skilled violinist, though initially credited merely as a session player. Immediately joining as an official band member, however, was double bassist Jacek Ostaszewski, brought in at Grechuta's request to boost the sound system's impact.

In February '70 the lineup went into the studio to put together their debut album. Eight songs were recorded: five classics of Polish poetry, set to music in turn by Grechuta and Pawluśkiewicz, and three original lyrics by Grechuta. The latter are today classics of Polish song, their fame spanning every generation.

“W dzikie wino zaplątani” points the finger at the routine of life as a couple, using parasitic plants as a metaphor for the restrictions that come with it. If Grechuta is so beloved today, it's also down to his ability to describe everyday life without hypocrisy and, as far as was possible under what was at the time a regime, without mincing his words. Even when love and romance seemingly win out, lurking around the corner can be boredom, misery, morbidity, indolence—all conditions Grechuta described throughout his career.

⟦Q1⟧ The Anawa try to render the concept of climbing vines with an intricate arrangement, a frenetic jazzy progression packed with instrumental rivulets: Mozartian piano breaks, sudden string accelerations, scribbles of electric organ coming and going.

"Będziesz moją panią" is an exercise in style in which Grechuta apes the poets of Polish Romanticism. He stages a love song evoking Arcadia, pulling in every sort of pastoral flattery ("Linden-wood violins will play for you, the rowan trees, the leaves and all the birds will sing for you," and so on). Anawa build another lovely jazzy whirl, while the accordion peeks through, recalling a kinship with chanson that will fade in the years to come, though never disappearing entirely.

The masterpiece is probably "Nie dokazuj". Another tale of amorous sighs over a little piano march and eighteenth-century strings, it's narrated as a series of events distant in time, set in contexts left constantly undefined: "a city", "a show", "an exhibition", as if the author can't quite remember, or simply doesn't know. Indeed, it's unclear whether these are things he actually lived through or things he learned orally, as the tradition of the troubadour would have it. With this song Grechuta dons the robes of the great Polish bard and carves out a place for himself outside of time.

“Ci fu una volta in una certa città del gran movimento. A show of unheard-of beauty had been staged. Tutti se lo gustavano, con un’eccezione. A girl in the front row cared for nothing, not even the fact that the singer was singing just for her. And after he'd lost his mind over her, she laughed and clapped her hands. In the second act the singer sang more quietly, but the girl still wasn't taking it seriously. Until suddenly, right in the middle of the show, these words rang out: 'Don't make fun of me, my dear, don't do it, there won't be such a miracle for you again. Not right away, my dear, you certainly won't melt the ice of my heart right away!' Un’altra volta ero stato invitato a un vernissage, a una mostra a tarda sera in una cantina buia. Were they canvases by the master Jan, or by Kanty? I don't remember… there were huge paintings, colourful canvases, suggestive sketches of wanton girls, a great joy that was nonetheless a still life. Non prenderti gioco di me, mia cara, non farlo, non ci sarà di nuovo un tale miracolo per te…”.

Alongside the tracks recorded specifically for the occasion, the tracklist also makes room for two songs from the '69 EP, "Serce" and "Niepewność", while "Tango Anawa" would remain out of the catalogue for decades.

On an instrumental level Marek Grechuta & Anawa it doesn't yet boast the “open” structures that its creators would go on to develop shortly after. The longest tracks are “Piosenka,” a splendid piece with a gothic flavor, and “Serce” itself, both clocking in just under five minutes. Even so, the richness of the orchestration is already striking, as is the quality of the performance and recording (the producer is Zofia Gajewska, a historic name on the local scene, who had already worked alongside Niemen). Wherever in the world you look, there aren't many singer-songwriter records from 1970 that can compete with this one for refinement.

Sales were not huge to begin with, nor were they for the albums that followed. None of Grechuta's studio albums during the Seventies ranked among the ten best-sellers of their respective years, meaning they all hovered around 50,000 copies at the time. And yet, judging by his current fame, one would think he dominated the scene back then. Not that he was unknown: besides being a fixture at the national festival in Opole, he had TV specials dedicated to him as early as 1969, even before his debut LP. But Niemen sold far more, and he wasn't the only one.

Time has reversed the situation and gradually turned Grechuta into a national hero. In particular, two events gave a very strong boost to the growth of his legend. The first was the 1990 TV special, which coincided with the end of the dictatorship and became a cult object (the live album Złote przeboje would be drawn from it). The other was, sadly, his death from heart failure in 2006, at just sixty years old. Today the songs from his albums with Anawa boast tens of millions of views on YouTube, and his records cyclically re-enter the charts, even reaching the top spots, proof of an iconic power that shows no sign of fading.

Korowód (1971)

After the first album the lineup was reshuffled. The flamboyant Marek Jackowski replaced Dziedzic on guitar, Paleta was made official on viola, and for the first time a drummer found a place in the band, Eugeniusz Makówka (even on the debut album faint drum parts could be heard, but they were played by session musicians).

In April '71 the new lineup went into the studio to record what remains to this day one of the high points of Polish music. Solemn from the title alone (“Procession”), epic from the cover onward, with the eight band members marching in a horizontal line while a storm of lightning rages above them, Korowód it blends stylistic variety, feeling and formal perfection. Despite the weight of the lyrics, its music is so compelling, layered and surprising that the legend has begun to cross Poland's borders and, thanks to the web, is slowly winning over the most receptive and curious prog fans, as well as folk and European singer-songwriter nerds. After all, there's no reason this music shouldn't appeal to fans of Brel and Serrat on one hand, or the Italian prog bands making greater use of acoustic instruments on the other.

Korowód is in fact an almost entirely acoustic album, but there's so much going on and so much energy radiating from the arrangements that one almost wonders what the point of plugging in the instruments would even be.

Opening the record, "Widzieć więcej" features a solo from Jackowski, who—unlike the previous guitarist—is keen to show his presence. He makes his way through the brač, a Balkan stringed instrument with an Eastern-tinged sound, layering multiple lines and creating a serpent made of strums, drones and note-streams reflected by echo. One can hear in it both the primitivism of American fingerpicking guitarists and the mysticism of traditional Anatolian music, while its arcane, suffocating atmosphere somehow seems to anticipate certain strands of experimental post-punk (from Virgin Prunes to Durutti Column). It's no coincidence that about a decade later Jackowski would end up fronting Maanam, one of the four historic bands of new wave Polish.

"Kantata" is a poem by Jan Zych, a merciless portrait of the harsh living conditions under the Soviet regime: "Ho sognato uccelli senza cielo, ho sognato cavalli senza terra. Here there is no season but winter. Here there is room for a labyrinth and for a boulder upon one's head. Un muro straniero confina con un altro muro straniero. On a stem in the garden a flower of the sky's flax withers…".

Pawluśkiewicz adapts it by dismantling the stereotypes of song form: dissonances introduced from the start, verses built on aggressive string ostinatos, and in place of a chorus two different piano passages, united only by an air of resigned serenity.

After leaving plenty of decision-making room to his colleagues, Grechuta takes charge with “Chodźmy”, a hundred seconds of pianistic march with the double bass grumbling away in imitation of a tuba. The contrast between the music's burlesque air and the seriousness of the lyrics, a hymn to hope, is overwhelming, almost disorienting: “Gather up all your ideas, gather your scrap of luck. There, where everything is still for you, wait for the day, it will come again. Let's go there to seek our day, the night flees, the light calls us”.

A choral ballad building to an epic crescendo, "Świecie nasz" is a kind of agnostic prayer. "Mondo nostro, dacci molti giorni luminosi. Dacci l'attesa di un giorno luminoso. Give us a way to put out the fire of evil. Dacci la gioia che cerchiamo. Dacci la fiamma, l'acciaio e il suono. Facci aprire tutti i più pesanti cancelli. Facci superare ogni difficoltà. Give us the joy of splendor and of change. Dacci l'ombra dell'erba alta. Facci perdere nel fruscio in mezzo agli alberi". It's remarkable that a song implying the misery of the present and calling for a change of direction managed to slip through the censors' net at the time. The power of poetry sometimes pulls that off too.

Closing side one is "Nowy radosny dzień" ("A New Joyful Day"), an instrumental that sounds like a dark, martial version of Ravel's "Boléro".

The other side of the record opens with a bang: "Dni, których nie znamy" is today Grechuta's anthem and the most famous Polish song of the Seventies. Baroque folk with a gentle air, dominated by violin, it is in fact an exhortation to life and a spur not to fear the future: "Only the days we don't yet know matter, only those few moments we wait for matter. […] Search for the answers, there isn't much time left". The final minute and a half is a whirl of overlapping "na na na"s generating sweet harmonies, but also slight dissonances, like a choir of drunken angels. The voices are once again those of the Alibabki, this time joined by siblings Aleksander and Ewa Bem, future stars of Polish jazz.

Most of the space, however, is taken up by the title track, an oppressive ten-minute monolith with which Anawa set off on a journey into the unknown. If a jam space-rock in a largely acoustic key, that's "Korowód”. The song kicks off as a swirling folk-funk number, with a wild Marian Pawlik, member of the prog outfit Dżamble, guesting on bass (the only electric presence on the record). As the backdrop seethes, punctuated among other things by majestic, ceremonial-sounding choirs, Grechuta fervently delivers the verses of poet Leszek Aleksander Moczulski, a series of questions probing human nature while denouncing the abuses of power: “Chi per primo è diventato un eroe? Chi ha vissuto ed è morto in miseria? Chi per primo è diventato signore? E chi per primo è diventato servo? Chi ha dovuto alzarsi presto? E chi ha potuto dormire fino a tardi? Eyes fixed on the dance, eyes fixed on us. Eyes fixed on the sun, eyes fixed on us, utterly unsure of ourselves, utterly unaware, we will ask for a long time, we will ask in secret […] Who was the first to become a fakir? Chi astrologo? Chi re? Chi dio? Someone from the constellation of Vega will guess who was the first man, and who will be the last?”.

Half a minute after this last question—a superb depiction of human solitude in the vastness of the universe—the song flows into a long improvised stretch, with the rhythm section pulsing hypnotically (while still shifting and throwing in flourishes) and Jackowski tirelessly grinding away on acoustic guitar. The real protagonist here, though, is Ostaszewski, who—freed from playing double bass on this track—can cut loose with a superhuman recorder solo. No one before them had ever imagined that instrument as a guide for a journey into the depths of outer space, but Anawa never seemed too interested in canons and rules.

There are some unsettling touches, like the wild vocalizations that come in shortly after 5'25'', or the echo effects starting at 6'25'', which turn every flute puff into a drone, generating a deformed, hallucinatory-sounding coda. Pure science fiction for popular music in 1971. Had the album become famous beyond Poland's borders, those moments would today be regarded as one of the founding acts of world music, and would have influenced generations of ethnic-music enthusiasts, electronic tinkerers and everyone in between.

A genuine artistic and technical triumph, with Gajewska outdoing herself on production, Korowód effectively marks the end of the collaboration between Grechuta and Anawa. The reason for the split was never known; one can only speculate it was a search for new creative stimuli.

Droga za widnokres (1972)

Grechuta thus turns into the solitary singer-songwriter who writes the tracks himself and has a band play them according to his direction. The democracy that reigned within Anawa is now just a memory, but that project managed to season the artist, who now has clear ideas on how to shape his work relying solely on his own strength.

Recorded and released at the end of '72, with a speed that was curious for Poland at the time, where albums were often held back for months and months before being pressed, Droga za widnokres finds Grechuta busying himself at the piano and composing every track. He's backed by Paweł Ścierański on guitars (for the first time including electric ones), Paweł Jarzębski on double bass, and a team of percussionists.

All the lyrics are by established Polish poets, past and present, except for the opening “Jeszcze pożyjemy”, penned by the singer himself: “Both for those who love bread, wholesome and hard, and for those kissed by fortune, without enemies. For those who pawn their watches, and for those who dance while others are exhausted. Hold on, poets of truth, hold on while you're exhausted, watch the others rise again as if God himself were leading them.”

It's a kind of ecumenical manifesto, dedicated to every possible human type found in Poland, from regime sympathizers to the staunchest dissenters, from the well-off to those who go hungry, in a maze of differing perspectives on the same, divisive reality.

Among the other poets' work, “Pewność” by Ewa Lipska stands out, striking in how violently it juxtaposes episodes of everyday life with events of historical weight. The contrast makes the former seem tiny and the latter imposing, almost intimidating, right up to the point where the boundaries of reality are annihilated. “There was this history exam, when all of a sudden every student failed. E al loro posto apparve un cimitero solenne. There's no certainty it was an exam, no certainty they had all failed — the only certainty is that in their place a solemn graveyard appeared. […] There was this language, but there's no certainty we spoke it. There were these pterodactyls flying, but there's no certainty it was our time. There was this love too, but there's no certainty it was ours. C'erano queste persone, ma non c'è certezza che fossimo noi”.

Compared to Korowód the music calls for a less demanding first approach. There are no tracks running past six minutes, and no tracks that aren't proper songs. Room for jam has been almost entirely eliminated, even though the jazz component has actually grown, swallowing up the classical music and folk touches. What remains is the theatrical approach to the vocals.

The producer is once again Gajewska, who pushes the double bass to the forefront, so that the instrument's lines dominate and color the groove, already fairly dense given the presence of drums, percussion, cymbals and shakers. These are traits common to every track, from the tender slow-burn of “Gdziekolwiek” to the choral flow of “Wędrówka”, from the insistent piano of “Pewność” to the more hesitant one of the title track.

It is also the first Grechuta record where the electric guitar carries real weight: its background lines color “Jeszcze pożyjemy”, brush against funk on the syncopated “Może usłyszysz wołanie o pomoc”, and accompany the march of “Gdzieś w nas”.

The band backing Grechuta in this period was called Wiem, an acronym for W Innej Epoce Muzycznej ("In Another Era of Music"). It wasn't, however, a well-defined lineup. Members came and went constantly, drifting in and out of the rich Polish jazz underground, to the point that, just a year after Droga za widnokres, none of those present at the recording remained.

Magia obłoków (1974)

Having spent 1973 between television appearances and concerts, Grechuta returned to the studio in May 1974 to record the album marking his sudden, explosive entry into the jazz-rock universe. This time there's an electric bass from start to finish, just as electric guitar dominates over acoustic. Even the violin is electric.

The warning signs were already audible among the grooves of the previous record, though nothing could have foreshadowed the sheer, shattering force of “Godzina miłowania”. A convulsive bassline and a sparking funk guitar open the song, which weaves Grechuta's austere voice together with powerful mixed choral harmonies. It's almost comical that such solemnity should be lavished on some of the simplest love lyrics the songwriter ever wrote: “O, if only you wanted to stay longer. An hour of love. It would be easier to persuade the world to reconcile, easier to tell the truth, easier to explain oneself in words, easier to lose oneself, easier to say goodbye, easier to come back again”.

Barely a minute and a half of yearning goes by before the unexpected arrives and the band derails into one of the finest jam jazz-rock pieces ever recorded. The players spur each other on, circling one another in a whirlwind of syncopation. Jan Adam Cichy's bass rolls and swells, turns dissonant and shifts tempo, Antoni Krupa's guitar hisses its feverish funk in the background, Eugeniusz Obarski's piano throws out cascades of crystalline, rhythmic sound, Kazimierz Jonkisz's drums are a storm of battered cymbals and sudden swerves, while above it all reigns Piotr Michera's violin, with a solo that's piercing, deep, and seemingly endless. The vocals return at the close, just in time to bring things full circle.

With the exception of Jonkisz, who had already made something of a name for himself, the musicians involved were — and would remain — largely unknown, yet hearing a performance like this, you'd swear you were listening to a gathering of the era's most celebrated jazz players.

The general public, however, preferred something more reassuring, like the moving ballad “Świat w obłokach”, with piano, choral harmonies and lyrics by the poet Ryszard Krynicki, full of doubt yet made hopeful by the calm restraint of the vocal delivery. “The world around you changes, the seasons change. The earth holds your feet captive, and the magic of the clouds your eyes. The secret knowledge of clouds, the phantasmagoria of clouds. The gaze of others in the clouds, the fleeting certainty of clouds”.

The suite “Spotkania w czasie”, three-quarters instrumental, was used as the soundtrack for the now-impossible-to-find documentary “Jastrun”, directed by Wiktor Prejs. It alternates pleasant, melodic passages with others that feel somewhat cerebral, never quite recapturing the intensity of “Godzina miłowania”. Better, then, is “A więc to nie tak”, a two-minute gem in which Grechuta returns to his signature marching piano style, once again pairing it with a poem by Ewa Lipska. It's one of the most provocative lyrics Grechuta ever sang, and it stands as proof of just how willing Poland was, among the Soviet bloc's dictatorships, to make concessions. “So it's not like it was in the books. So it's not like it was in the courtyard. Flowers in green porcelain vases, a ribbon tied proudly in the hair. […] The one who invented faith and dynamite, does he see what they're used for today? The one who spread the clouds above us, which storm does he count on today?”

Slightly uneven, but with peaks of stunning intensity, Magia obłoków would remain Marek Grechuta's last great album.

The drop in momentum

marek_grechuta_4 The artist never truly loses his way, but something breaks after the mid-Seventies. His records will no longer show the voracity and constant sonic exploration that had made them so adventurous and intellectually stimulating.

This is proven by Szalona lokomotywa (1977), the soundtrack to Krzysztof Jasiński's musical of the same name. The lyrics rework some of the most important prose writings of 20th-century Polish literature (Witkacy, Józef Czechowicz, Witold Gombrowicz), but the music abandons its progressive leanings to dive into classic cabaret and singer-songwriter territory. The same year saw the release of a 7-inch duet with future star Maryla Rodowicz, "Gaj", another piano-driven musical cabaret sketches.

Grechuta doesn't entirely give up trying, as shown by his forays into keyboards attempted in the Eighties, but these are often mere tweaks, almost always trailing behind the surrounding scene rather than leading it. Credit must be given to him, however, for never selling out to the highest bidder. He released music sparingly and only when he felt the need, just eight albums between 1977 and 1994, all dignified, carefully crafted, far from the most facile corners of pop and true instead to his authorial identity. Not without occasional flashes of his old greatness, capable of still sending a shiver down the spine.

Behind the slowdown in output and the shifting bursts of inspiration was likely the worsening of the bipolar disorder Grechuta had always suffered from, which from a certain point on became bearable only thanks to his wife, Danuta. Kept secret for a long time, the illness gave rise to unfounded rumors about the singer. His stiff manner of singing in some performances, his arms hanging limp at his sides, sporadic episodes of excessive sweating — all of it fed the legend of the drunken artist.

Not that this stopped him from winning over the public's affection, which, as mentioned in the introduction, would keep growing steadily after the Seventies.

Proof of this came in 1987 with the great success of Wiosna – ach to ty, whose splendid title track remains one of his anthems to this day. A story of love and physical passion told through the parallel of the changing seasons (the title translates as "Oh, spring, it's you!"), it features a folk dance with violins and a delicate female countermelody, like a Branduardi returning from a tour of Eastern Europe.

Less well known, but hugely cult, are delicate love songs such as "Nieoceniona" (1989) and "Niechaj mnie Zośka o wiersze nie prosi" (1991, based on a poem by Juliusz Słowacki, a sort of Polish equivalent to Giacomo Leopardi), in which the sound shifts toward pastoral territory close to new age, yet never kitschy.

In 1994 the minuet of "Ojczyzna" celebrates Poland, which had only recently regained its freedom, but above all reveals itself as a warning to keep alive the memory of the country's great artists, those who shaped its historical conscience: "Oggi vivi in un paese così ricco. Your history, your language, your art — these three flowers you hold in your hands, as the inheritance of entire generations. Devono ancora fiorire perché il paese sopravviva. Without history, without language, without art, without the wisdom of this teaching, the nation becomes a country without a name".

His studio career seems to end here. For nine long years Grechuta releases nothing, limiting himself to appearances on television and in theaters. In 2002 the Fryderyk Award, Poland's equivalent of the Grammys, invites him and celebrates his career. A fitting tribute.

Finale

One day in May 2003, Poland woke up to unexpected news. Myslovitz, the biggest Polish band of the moment, announced the release of a new single. Duetting with their singer, Artur Rojek, was none other than Grechuta himself.

The title is “Kraków”, a reworking of a track originally included by Myslovitz on the album “Miłość w czasach popkultury” (1999), one of the masterpieces of non-English-language rock. While the original has a guitar-driven sound capable of swinging between melancholy and bursts of energy, just a step away from britpop, the new version with Grechuta transforms it into a gem of jazzy chamber-pop, all intimate strings and brush-played drums. Sung poetry takes the lead once again, and Rojek's lyrics sound as if they could have been written by Grechuta himself: “Kraków has never held so much strength within it as today. Maybe it's this rain, maybe it's through this fog… maybe it's my mood, but I see you in every face. […] Kraków, the trumpeter plays and calls out to me. He looks at me as if he knew I'm coming back here, even if just for a moment. To close my eyes and dream hard that… I see you, I know. I won't take any more photos, I know. I won't pray, I know. It's such a shame, I know”.

If dedicating a love poem to a place, effectively personified, is not a new device in Polish music — just think of "Nie pytaj o Polskę" by Obywatel G.C. — Grechuta's influence is clear in the choice of symbols, sometimes tragic ones, that are drawn upon. The "trumpeter", for example, refers to the melody that rings out every hour from the top of the tower of St. Mary's Church. The tune suddenly stops, in memory of the legend of a young man who, in 1241, tried to warn the city after spotting Tartar troops approaching on the horizon. Sadly, he managed to play only a few notes before being struck in the throat by an enemy arrow.

The new version of "Kraków" surpasses the original in fame and becomes a modern classic of Polish song.

By the end of the year, in an environment that now treated him as a hero, Marek Grechuta released what would remain his final album, Niezwykłe miejsca, dedicated to a series of places and cities scattered around the world. Somewhat unexpectedly, it turned out to be a commercial flop, even though it came out at a time when his anthologies were a fixture on the charts. The formula, in truth, is anything but accessible, with several tracks edging close to spoken word over an orchestral backdrop. It's a heartfelt record, but, truth be told, a bit drowsy.

From that moment on, Grechuta releases nothing more. He will die, as mentioned, three years later.

Fragments, Legacy

A serious gap in Grechuta's discography is the lack of a well-curated anthology. The best ones currently available on the market are Złota kolekcja: Dni, których nie znamy (1999) and Złota kolekcja: Gdzieś w nas (2004), later combined in 2008 into a single volume.

The first, in particular, is important because it finally makes room for “Tango Anawa”, from the 1969 EP, and makes available for the first time the tender piano ballad “Pomarańcze i mandarynki”. Dating back to the earliest Anawa sessions in 1968, over the decades it was played on the radio and performed several times on television, yet it was never released commercially. As already explained in the monograph on the Republika, in Soviet-era Poland it was in fact not so rare for even very famous songs, like this one, to never make it onto a physical release.

Despite containing high-quality material, the double selection leaves a somewhat bitter aftertaste, especially when it comes to the Eighties and Nineties, from which several classics were left out.

It must be said, in defence of those who put the selection together, that this is not an easy repertoire to summarize without disappointing someone. Grechuta represents the foundation on which every Polish singer-songwriter who came after him has built. His name is synonymous with sung poetry and, as such, a crucial node of national identity. There's no point even attempting a list of everyone who has covered his songs, for the simple fact that pretty much everyone has tried, regardless of the era.

His grave is constantly laden with flowers and candles, his monuments are scattered across the country, the Grechuta Festival dedicated to him grows more significant every year, radio stations on the anniversary of his death – October 9th – play nothing but his songs, and he takes the top spot every time a poll is held on the best local music. The devotion Poles feel for him seems to know no end.

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google

Share on

This article is an English translation of the original Italian text, published on OndaRock.it. It was translated with the help of artificial intelligence, under the editorial responsibility of OndaRock's editor-in-chief, Claudio Fabretti.

Read the original in Italian · About the English edition

Marek Grechuta on OndaRock

Discography

MAREK GRECHUTA & ANAWA
Marek Grechuta & Anawa (Polskie Nagrania Muza, 1970)
Korowód (Polskie Nagrania Muza, 1971)
MAREK GRECHUTA
Droga za widnokres (Polskie Nagrania Muza, 1972)
Magia obłoków (Pronit, 1974)
Szalona lokomotywa (Pronit, 1977)
Pieśni Marka Grechuty do słów Tadeusza Nowaka (Pronit, 1979)
Śpiewające obrazy (Pronit, 1981)
W malinowym chruśniaku (Polskie Nagrania Muza, 1984)
Wiosna - ach to ty (Polskie Nagrania Muza, 1987)
Krajobraz pełen nadziei (Polskie Nagrania Muza, 1989)
Złote przeboje (live, Markart, 1990)
Piosenki dla dzieci i rodziców (Markart, 1991)
Dziesięć ważnych słów (Markart, 1994)
Niezwykłe miejsca (Pomaton, 2003)
Golden collection: Dni, których nie znamy / Gdzieś w nas (compilation, Pomaton, 2008)