Singing workshops with Joanna Skowrońska

Meetings and workshops included working with voice, in particular learning traditional singing with the so-called open voice. This style is known in many cultures. It is easy to learn and yet leave an enormous stylistic freedom. The practice consists of body exercises, breathing exercises, work with the voice emission and extraction, work on the song (intonation, ect.), learning to listen and to resonate in singing. There were also be music games to help learn rhythm. It expanded knowledge about the cultural context of the performance of songs, their functionality and meaning. The spread of the singing tradition in folk culture is based both on its particular community-building function and on its ease of expressing individual aesthetic needs. Singing as a usage form has been used in many cultures (like Slavic cultures, but also in Inuit, African Americans and today in the hip-hop subculture) to solve disputes with the help of a special musical form (vocal / dissy), but also as a way to spend time with each other and build relationships.

Joanna Skowrońska – ethnologist, singer, musician. For many years she has been conducting field research in Poland and Ukrainian Polesie and since 2010 in Lower Silesia. It registers, documents and investigates songs, leading to CDs issued by the Libellenstiftung. Singing is taught mainly with village singers, but also workshops with important ethnomusicologists, folklorists from Poland and Central and Eastern Europe. She investigates the diversity of voice transmission in traditional singing and the perception of songs by performers and audiences in the modern world, as well as the transformation of traditional ceremonies. Joanna is co-founder of the Lower Silesian Edition of the “Little Kolberg” and of the Ruszkowska, Łęczycka and Lower Silesian Traditional School within the Kolberg Academy. Scholarship holder of the Minister of Culture (2018). Ensembles are played and co-created that perform traditional music in both crudo and contemporary sound, among others: Kust, Known of the Hare, Beautiful Songs, Cormorant Excluded, Reclaimed Songs, Sound Songs, Ensemble “From Forest.”

Residency's finale took place on 9 November 2022 in Egilsstaðir. Joanna also appeared on Fabryka Sztuki's stage in Łódź on 22 November 2023 as a member of Kust band.