Polish female trio Sutari will be performing at the 10th annual Brno Music Marathon festival. They've performed hundreds of concerts in more than 20 countries, including a performance at the 2015 WOMEX World Music Fair and a live session for American radio KEXP. They've released several award-winning albums, the most recent of which, from 2024, is called #kołysankidlaświata and features lullabies. Their music combines traditional Polish songs with modern elements and touches on themes of nature, freedom, femininity and sisterhood. Sutari will open the festival's World Music stage on Saturday 9 August in the Brno club První patro. Our questions were answered by all three group members together - Basia Songin, Kasia Kapela and Dobromiła Życzyńska.
In addition to several strong albums of your own, you also have an interesting collaboration with the instrumental, all-male band Bastarda on your 2022 album Tamoj. How did that come about?
Bastarda invited us to do something together. They liked our music and really wanted to work with us. And it's true that we immediately found a common language. We found that our voices matched their instruments beautifully. It was a joy for all of us to be able to make an album together with a theme that we all find important. That's about the situation on the Polish-Belarusian border and the migration crisis.
What did you enjoy about this collaboration, besides the theme?
We love joint projects like this. We enjoy meeting and working with other musicians. With every project like this, we have to open up and think about what we can contribute. In this case, the guys from Bastarda brought the amazing world of their instruments, their music, their feelings, the way they understand music. We added our musical ideas - and it was a real adventure for us. While they mostly play instrumental music, we only work with voices. So it all fit together beautifully and our different approaches made for a great balance.
Let's take a moment to look at your individual projects. You're three women, all singing. How do you divide the roles between you when performing or filming?
It's a process. Even within our group, we try to find a balance between our voices that benefits the overall sound of the trio. Much of our music is improvised. So yes, the process of how our music is made is really important to us, even if you only see the result of our efforts on stage. We work a lot with stories and it's important for us that each of us understands every story, every song, every lyric. We also try to find room for our own stories in each song. Each of the voices that make up our trio is different, but it's important that we speak a common language.
You based your work on Polish folklore, but your music is not strictly folk. So what exactly do you borrow from folklore?
We take our initial ideas from folk music. We're heavily inspired by Polish folklore and use some folk instruments. Our songs are also based on folk rhythms. But, for example, on the latest album we work a lot with our own melodies. We try to write original music that evokes similar feelings as folk music does. We've also started seeking inspiration in other cultures. On the latest album, for example, we have a Lithuanian melody. What's also new is that for this album we invited several guests, women who represent other cultures, such as Ukrainian or Iranian. This kind of meeting of different worlds is important for us. It enables us to bring global issues to the fore.
The album is called #kołysankidlaświata and is all about lullabies. Why did you choose this topic?
We think that it's not only children that need lullabies. Especially in these difficult times, when war is raging very close to our borders. At times like these, each of us needs a song that will caress, soothe and bring us peace. Lullabies are also magical in their own way. They can conjure up a better world not only for our children, but also for ourselves. That's why we chose them.
You say: "To conjure up a better world." Can music really make the world a better place?
Yes, music does make the world a better place. We feel better when we can communicate with others through music. It lets us find a common space. Sometimes it's hard to communicate with words and through music we can meet and be together. It's also a question of vulnerability. We let it in and expose ourselves as vulnerable beings. We get rid of the fear that is a factor in most problems. With music we cross borders. In making music we can meet each other and share, no matter what our political views are, where we live, what language we speak, what our roots are. Music is a beautiful place to start changing the world.
Your 2020 album Siostry rzeki also has an interesting theme.
That's our third album. With each album we try more and more to write our own lyrics. And in this case we thought it was the right time to say something for ourselves about nature, about climate change and about how we need to take care of the environment. That's why we chose the river as a symbol of something wild that we have to protect. In Poland we still have "wild" rivers. Water is the most basic thing we must protect in order to avert impending disaster. In addition, a beautiful initiative has been set up in Poland, a movement of women artists called the River Sisters, who have made it their goal to protect our rivers. That's why we've decided to add our voices to this movement.
And how do you remember your very beginnings, your 2014 album Wiano, which you recently re-released?
Recording the first album was a big adventure for us. We didn't know how to go about it, what exactly we'd need to do it, where to go and so on. We wanted to record our songs on a CD in the same way as when we play them in concert. But it was actually a very long and difficult process to get our music out as an album. It took a long time, but at the same time we felt a real sense of freedom. When you want to achieve something and you don't know how to do it, you go for it and do exactly what you feel. So, when we look back at our first album, the first thing we remember is the great freedom that music brings us.
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