Memento Mori Dance Club is an experiment situated at the crossroads of traditional music,\nearly music, and the individual musical experiences of the ensemble\u2019s members. It explores\nthe relationships between Polish traditional religious singing and the dance music of past\ncenturies.<\/p>\n
Within the musical phrases of devotional songs, still practiced until recently in the villages of\nthe Polish lowlands, one can hear polonaises and mazurkas\u2014melodies that once\naccompanied dances and later served as musical settings for religious texts by both well-\nknown and lesser-known poets. Many songs were also composed by anonymous folk\ncreators, who wrote melodies revealing the idiom of dance music-making. The Memento\nMori Dance Club project seeks the contexts and circumstances in which these two seemingly\ncontradictory layers\u2014instrumental dance music and contemplative religious texts\u2014can\nfunction simultaneously.<\/p>\n
Our path toward this goal has been inspired by a characteristic feature of traditional rural\nculture: the avoidance of a strict division between performers and audience. Thus, we play\nconcerts that naturally transform into communal singing gatherings. With the help of a small\nsongbook, everyone has the opportunity to participate in the songs, and the sound of the\ninstruments and rhythmic pulses only help facilitate this participation.<\/p>\n
We also play the same melodies for dancing:devotional and wisdom-filled lyrics,\nremembered somewhere in the back of the mind, that lend dignity to the walking\npolonaises, while the meanings and messages of the texts seem to gain greater power within\nthe paradoxical context of a swirling dance celebration. Memento Mori Dance Club seeks the\nspirit of traditional musical culture, not through ethnomusicological reconstruction but by\nfollowing the path of its own creative expression\u2014an expression rooted in the long-standing\nexperiences of its musicians, who have absorbed the traditions of rural artists through direct\ntransmission.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Memento Mori Dance Club to projekt eksperymentalny plasuj\u0105cy si\u0119 na pograniczu \u015bwiata muzyki tradycyjnej, muzyki dawnej oraz indywidualnego do\u015bwiadczenia muzycznego cz\u0142onk\u00f3w zespo\u0142u, eksploruj\u0105cy zwi\u0105zki mi\u0119dzy polskim tradycyjnym \u015bpiewem religijnym a taneczn\u0105 muzyk\u0105 minionych wiek\u00f3w. We frazach pie\u015bni nabo\u017cnych do niedawna praktykowanych jeszcze we wsiach Polski nizinnej, brzmi\u0105 polonezy i mazury, kt\u00f3re niegdy\u015b towarzyszy\u0142y ta\u0144com, by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-30","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mmdc.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/30","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mmdc.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mmdc.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mmdc.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mmdc.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30"}],"version-history":[{"count":34,"href":"https:\/\/www.mmdc.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/30\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1462,"href":"https:\/\/www.mmdc.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/30\/revisions\/1462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mmdc.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}