Music from a world-by-world perspective, from the distant (or near) future. A potential future where communities create new ethnicities and tribes arise as a result of an ideological choice not resulting from birth or origin. Traditions interpenetrate and create new qualities on the foundations of eternally existing archetypes. New languages and melodies carry echoes of old cultures. The old guide - nature - comes to the fore.
We traveled for a long time, along winding roads with the horizon so far away that our eyes could barely see it. We were familiar with forest paths, silently pulsating springs, moonlit nights and the singing of crickets. We got lost among the rustle of grass and climbed to peaks breathing with fog. We counted the waves of the ocean. We collected stories and symbols remembered in bark and stone. From these particles we weaved new dialects, songs and sounds.
We weave our story through an organic combination of image (film) with live music and elements of stage movement. The "two moons” - the title of our upcoming album - are the axis around which the musical, plot and visual threads are constructed - the duality of nature, symmetry, strangeness and familiarity of the new/old world. The whole thing ends in 13 songs - as many as there are full moons in one cycle of the year.
We were inspired by the sounds of nature, vocal techniques from various traditions, dialects mythology and old fairy tales from different parts of the world. In our artistic work we seek a path to create a complex world of the tribe that does not exist yet, but may exist in the future.
UMAI is co-created by performers with many years of stage and creative experience - Agnieszka Mendel and Basia Songin - who operate on the border of several media: music, theater, stories and film. Singers exploring traditional and contemporary vocal techniques, experimenting with sounds and the idea of composition as a story. In their musical work, they are inspired by the sounds of nature, literature, landscape, old stories and the ethnic culture of many peoples of the Earth.
BASIA SONGIN voices, vielle, drums, kankles, mandoline, ambient
AGNIESZKA MENDEL-HANUSEK voices, drums, guitalele, percussion, ambient
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Photos by Helena Ganjalyan.