Day of the czechs and the podhale highlanders / main concert

They come from the place where Great Moravia - the cradle of the Czechs and Slovaks - may have come into existence. So they come from the place where cultures intermingle. They begin. Just like that, without any announcement, the Czech band welcomes everyone as swiftly as the Tatra waterfalls run. And, of course, the beginning element is the hearty Czech-Polish hug with pinwheels in hand.

On his shepherd’s horn Krzysztof Trebunia-Tutka plays an invitation for those who are still coming, or perhaps are wondering whether to come? There is nothing to think about.

Today, Patryk Rutkowski, the Festival concert director, proclaims the day of FRIENDSHIP, just as yesterday was the day of SMILE. Friendship is about touch, so hand in hand to whoever is next to you, whoever is behind you, whoever is in front of you, and the hand is followed by a smile, the one from yesterday, which just a while ago everyone took out of their pocket and put in place, under their nose...

The emcees greet the guests. Today in particular: Stanisław Tkaczyk, the mayor of the Krościenko nad Dunajcem Commune; Andrzej Pietrzyk, the mayor of the Bukowina Tatrzańska Commune, and his wife; and of course the parents of the performing children. 


“Hoś! Hoś!” is how the audience calls out the ensemble OMLADINKA, which means ‘a maiden.’ This invitation is answered by the music played by our friends from the Czech Republic; are they playing something along the lines of... ‘krakowiak’?! Indeed, it is one of those moments when we come to understand that wherever we come from, somewhere in the past we will find that one common cradle. And if we do not find it, because it is veiled in the mists of history, we intuit its existence. And that is enough.

A few dances and... a party, a short one but dynamic, full of tension: the guys are about to turn up with a fishing rod. The fish is biting. It feels like it is a big one, since they had to pull it out, like a certain united group would pull out a certain turnip in the garden in a Polish fairy tale.

And the plaintive violins, then the other strings, and then the dulcimer... gently along with the rest. It is a stringed instrument too... and since this music is called dulcimer music, it's probably the most important kind of music in the band. And so we are having an all-music moment. They are playing fast, faster and faster... so fast that the calves under the seats tremble.

In the basket a few feathers, around the basket - a few girls. And one of those feathers (as Patryk Rutkowski warned before the Czech group's performance) has some kind of power. It can knock you off your feet and make you dance, and if it gets into the wrong hands, it will force the girls to pretend to be “old women,” and the boys to show what they can do when they get together as a group...

And dancing, and singing, and music...


And the director, and the emcee...

Krzysztof with a shepherd's bag, beautifully woven, decorated with tassels, “na łoscypecki, na piscołecki” - for sheep’s smoked cheese and pipes.

A beautiful bag, although not as colourful as our festival bag, because ours is actually a backpack. And there is something peeping out of the bag - well, what is that? This riddle of Patryk’s is correctly solved by the children: a lamb!


We fly over the Tatra Mountains as quickly as if we have grasped griffins. 

And here, in a field near Bukowina Tatrzańska...

A rake. Such a simple tool. A tool so necessary to rake in the hay, which is scattered in front of the stage. There is also a pole that is slowly turning into a hay pole, around which they will be stacking hay in a moment. At work, but singing. Well, maybe not exactly at work. They are rather resting. And they are singing so powerfully that they can be certainly heard in some other mountain pastures, far, far away. Because that's what the singing was for and that's what the ‘calling out’ was for - to make the loneliness in the mountain pastures less lonely.

More girls are coming. They greet each other by the name of God. They will now be working together. The work will be done faster. A boy with a button accordion is bribed into playing, and now, to the sounds the air pumped out the bellows is generating, the girls are singing, slowly finishing their work. The hay stack is up.

 Everything now moves to the stage. So a different location, a different place... A picture so lavish. 

“A hare is sitting in the meadow...” and it is immediately clear who will be the Baba Yaga. And on stage, children from the very youngest, who not long ago were rocked in a cradle, to boys so big that they will probably soon  be thinking about getting married.

And now a more “masculine” game - “ass,” where one of the boys gets spanked in the body part after which the game is named, and the others are supposed to guess “which one was the spanking one.”

A long counting-out rhyme about who is going to be what animal, and then which poor little thing is going to grab the falling broom...

The tug-of-war can be - if one insists - a simple exemplification of a difficult problem present in most relationships, and encapsulated in a single question: “Who is right?” Not resolved.

“On stage” I would say, if it weren't for the fact that it's no longer a stage; it's a place full of old life enchanted into movement, into that “polecka” that the girls are currently dancing, into those little wooden horses, hurdles, horse collars repaired by the older boys.

So, not “on stage” but “among the cottages,” uncle Bartek appears to help the older ones fix the wagon wheels, and as he returns, the whole band comes along.

And although the boys are already singing and asking the girls to dance, the others, the younger ones, are still playing with rag dolls, trying to walk on stilts, rocking on horses, fighting with wooden swords, riding a wooden bicycle... However, the music is getting them more and more entangled, and they are brushing their kiyrpce against the stage in such a way that it seems as if sparks are about to fly out from under their feet. Hopefully, not in the direction of the hay stack in front of the stage!

A manly handshake from the uncle seals his gratitude for the boys' help in repairing the farm equipment. 

It is no coincidence that we mentioned the boys, who are drawing closer to getting married than to making a journey on a wooden bicycle. One of them clearly wants to dance with uncle Bartek’s daughter, and since the latter one doesn't mind, there is something to it, and any obstacles are rather unlikely.

Because dance is a metaphor for love!

The guys are putting each other’s prowess to the test of the ‘hajduk’ dance. Uncle Bartek too can enter the test dance. No! After all he cannot! The kids are bringing him off the stage and, having provoked him, they will now have to help aunt Agnes on the farm.

MALI WIYRCHOWIANIE leave the sta... sorry... the area between the cottages is in a masterly fashion! A game of hide and seek, with everyone running around to hide. They disappear behind the scenes. And do not come back.


Krzysztof’s short recital on bagpipes, the kind of bagpipes made by Piotr Majerczyk, who is present in the auditorium. He creates them or resuscitates them, giving old, tired instruments a new lease of life. 


And Patryk, the concert director, must have a magic feather from the Czech Republic hidden somewhere, because he says “apple” and everyone stands up; he says “plum” - they sit down, and in response to the password, or perhaps the magic charm “pear” - they turn around...


And once again we skip to the other side of the Tatra Mountains to listen to the low boy-male singing of the Czech band members.

The dances are different, the songs are different, the words... but the significance... because whenever he is dancing with her, she is happy; whenever he goes off to dance with others, she is unhappy, but she won't be offended for long, because there’s the risk that he doesn’t ask her again. Dance is a metaphor for love. Dance is a metaphor for life. And sometimes - just like in life - you must stop, look deeply into each other's eyes, join hands, grab one handkerchief... 

And move on together.