Zigrīdas Kalpi serves up twist to traditional songs

Jana Anderson | 

Zigrīdas kalpi

Zigrīdas Kalpi unites two Latvian-Australian folk ensembles, Zigrīda Ansamblis and Kalnu Kalpi. (Publicity photo)

Vilciņš kauca

Vilciņš kauca is an EP compact disc released by Zigrīdas Kalpi, a collaborative project between seven third-generation Latvian-Australians living in Adelaide and Brisbane.

These talented musicians, inspired by traditional Latvian folk music, arranged their favourite songs and produced the recording. The songs are well-known Latvian folk melodies, but the group’s unique interpretations are refreshing. Even the most familiar tunes ring with a new quality.

Kalnu Kalpi is a male folk group from Adelaide that sings ancient Latvian war songs and Zigrīda Ansamblis is a female kokle group from Brisbane. The two groups have been playing independently for many years, performing at Australian Latvian arts festivals such as Jaunatnes dienas and Kultūras dienas. Through their common interest in Latvian folk music, members of the two groups forged friendships and developed a mutual respect for each other’s musical ability. Recently, they united and have played together as Zigrīdas Kalpi during the 2008 Kultūras dienas in Sydney and at the National Folk Festival in Canberra this year.

Both Zigrīda Ansamblis and Zigrīdas Kalpi tracks have received airtime on ABC FM, an Australia-wide national radio broadcast.

The members of Zigrīdas Kalpi are Aleksandrs Šmits (percussion, voice), Ance Deksne (kokle, melodica, percussion, voice), Krišjānis Putniņš (guitar, percussion, voice), Mārtiņš Medenis (recorder, percussion, voice), Matīss Biezaitis (bass guitar), Tija Lodiņa (percussion, voice) and Valda Biezaite (vargāns, recorder, percussion, voice).

Vilciņš kauca features traditional Latvian instruments including the kokle, the recorder and the vargāns (Jew’s harp). The melodica replaces the sound usually produced by an accordion and the songs often rely on a guitar and bass guitar accompaniment. These are not traditional instruments, however, with the contemporary arrangements less conventional sounds integrate well with the traditional melodies.

“Gaismeņa ausa,” sung in the Latgalian tongue, speaks of light dawning as the sun rises early in the morning. The recorder and guitar accompaniment evokes a medieval sound. Powerful male and female vocal harmonies give the song strength in contrast with the breezy instrumentals. The unique voices of the individual members of Zigrīdas Kalpi are characteristic to the sound of the EP and I found the more times I listened to the disc, the more I could separate individual voices and appreciate the vocal harmonies in each song.

The title track “Vilciņš kauca” (The Wolf Howled) is a favourite of many Zigrīdas Kalpi fans who first heard the song when the group performed it at Kultūras dienas. The song is about a man going to Rīga with his wolf to buy his father tobacco. Zigrīdas Kalpi arranged the song as a reggae number but still preserving the folk element. Hearing this song performed live, it is impossible to resist moving your body to the beat and getting into the funky groove folk-reggae. A recording studio removes the audience and the subtle audio and visual cues from a performance that can make a song sound fantastic, so to hear this song at its best, enjoy it live (or the next best thing—YouTube).

The EP only includes five songs, not enough to satisfy the senses, but enough to demonstrate the musical capability of these musicians. In “Gula meitiņa” the combinations of kokle and bass guitar, and percussion accents and vocal overtones, create a rich musical tapestry. In “Div’ dūjiņas,” a song about two doves sprinting through the air and two soldiers riding on horseback to war, the recorder harmonies race over the drum beats and clapping sticks, which keeps the song moving at a fast pace like the doves and the horses. The haunting vocal arrangements in “Lēni lēni” give a sombre and musically sensitive conclusion to the CD, indicative of the musical intuition of Zigrīdas Kalpi.

Hopefully, the members of Zigrīdas Kalpi will continue their joint musical projects and more folk-reggae tracks are to come.

Details

Vilciņš kauca

Zigrīdas Kalpi

2009

On the Web

draugiem.lv

The group’s page on the Latvian social networking site draugiem.lv. LV

Zigrīdas Kalpi

Formed in 2008, Zigrīdas Kalpi joins two Latvian-Australian folk groups, Zigrīda ansamblis and Kalna kalpi. The group’s official Web site includes information on ordering the EP compact disc. EN LV

Zigrīdas Kalpi on MySpace

The group’s page on MySpace includes samples of its music. EN

Latvian to be honored for saving drowning man in Ireland

Andris Straumanis | 

A 25-year-old Latvian working as a pizza delivery man in Ireland is to be honored for pulling a drowning man to safety.

Agris Jankovičs, an employee of Apache Pizza in Drogheda, jumped into the Boyne River on the night of June 22 to save the man.

He and other employees of the nearby pizzeria were taking a break when they heard the man’s wife and children screaming, according to the Drogheda Independent.

Jankovičs is expected to be honored in November with an Irish Water Safety “Just in Time” award for bravery. The honor, which is sponsored by the Seiko watch company, includes a gift of a new timepiece. The annual ceremony is to take place in Dublin Castle.

Jankovičs told the Latvian portal Baltic-Ireland.eu that jumping several meters into the river did not frighten him because he has leapt from much higher points into a canal in Liepāja, Latvia.

According to the Drogheda Independent, Apache Pizza also is presenting Jankovičs with a new mobile telephone, because he lost his when he jumped into the river.

About 160 people drown in Ireland each year, according to Irish Water Safety.

Andris Straumanis is a special correspondent for and a co-founder of Latvians Online. From 2000–2012 he was editor of the website.

After the festival: Hangover or withdrawal?

Daina Bolšteins | 

The trip home from a Latvian song festival and the proceeding days are typically filled with exhaustion and a combination of both relief and regret that an event one had long been waiting for is suddenly over.

The festival guide or vadonis will now join a collection of other guides from past festivals on the bookshelf, and the memories will begin to meld with those of other Latvian mega-events. This is particularly true for the hearty individuals who participated at the festival—as singers, dancers, actors, musicians or organizing committee members. These dedicated Latvians spent months or even years preparing for the intense extravaganza of Latvian culture that comes around only every few years. 

As an individual who is very actively involved in the Latvian-American community and who has been a dancer or singer in a number of song festivals, after participating in the most recent Latvian song festival in Hamilton, Canada, for only two days (plus eight hours of driving each way), I found myself struggling to describe my post-festival state. Initially I wanted to use the word “hangover,” but decided that it gave the wrong (negative) connotation. It is not possible for me to experience too much Latvian culture and friendship in just two days. 

The other term that came to mind was “withdrawal,” but this too has a less-than-positive connotation. At home in an average week, I participate in at least two Latvian activities—teaching Latvian school and singing in a Latvian folk ensemble—plus I still communicate only in Latvian with my extended family. In other words, “being Latvian” is a daily part of my life, not something done occasionally. (As Juris Kronbergs wrote in his aptly named poem “Reālisms Rīgā,” for some of us being Latvian isn’t a hobby, but as essential as our lungs and breathing.)  Thus, for me attending a song festival isn’t like drinking water after a long walk through a desert, as may be for some other Latvians. 

However, spending two full days living and breathing Latvian-ness—speaking Latvian all day, hearing Latvian all around me, meeting dozens of Latvian friends and acquaintances, wearing my folk costume and performing folk songs three separate times in addition to watching other performers—is rather different than my everyday existence doing paperwork in a windowless government office, running errands and cursing the traffic and high cost of living in Washington, D.C. (During a song festival every participant, silently or aloud, does curse the cost of attending one, and it now seems to be tradition to complain about the hotel elevators that are never able to effectively handle the song festival foot traffic.)

So, was it withdrawal or a hangover that I suffered from after the festival? It was neither. The state I was in is a syndrome that has not yet been given a name, and one that cannot be described in a word or two. I was physically exhausted, possibly socially over-stimulated, glad about how well my ensemble’s performances were received. I was also grateful that a few industrious Latvians in North America are still willing and able to organize such large-scale events.

Moreover, I was happy to see that there are Latvian-Canadians and Latvian-Americans 10 and 20 years younger than myself who dance, sing and are carrying on our traditions. At the opening concert, “Sitiet bungas!,” one of the little girls in the choir sang with the kind of gusto typically seen only on Broadway. She could not have been more than 6 years old, but she knew all of the lyrics perfectly and occasionally spread out her arms in an enthusiastic gesture rarely seen in a Latvian choir performance. If only we all went about participating in Latvian activities with such energy, enthusiasm and expertise, our community would be set for a good while longer.