Folk songs found in the Polesia region are scattered fragments of a much greater female epic. They tell stories of girls left alone with newborn children, about wives whose husbands don’t let them visit their families, about a longing for home, and evil mothers-in-law who keep young wives from going back. Maniucha Bikont talks with Agata Trzebuchowska about her travels collecting these traditional songs. 

Agata Trzebuchowska: What was your first encounter with traditional music?

Maniucha Bikont: I was a child. My father’s friends paid us a visit. They’d met when working with Grotowski [a Polish theatre director – ed. note]. I listened to their powerful voices in absolute awe. I dreamt of being able to sing like them. Then, year after year, music became more and more important to me. I travelled to Ukraine, which was a breakthrough. I will never forget that day-long journey along country roads, through woods and narrow ravines, rutted roads extending endlessly, potholes and that never-ending emptiness. People came out of their homes to greet us, they were so thin and fragile I was scared of hugging them. Yet when they started to sing, an energy filled their bodies; the sort of energy many people who go clubbing in cities could do with. Songs that to me seemed difficult and abstract flowed out of these folks organically, without any effort. I was totally thrilled!

You came back transformed.

I wanted to do nothing else. For years, I travelled across our eastern border, collecting folk songs. After coming home, I would listen to the recordings over and over again, humming the tunes, learning the lyrics, learning Ukrainian. I pasted up song lines all over my home. I came to realize that my commute between Woodrow Wilson Square and Warsaw city centre lasts exactly two songs. Or that a ski lift ride was enough to sing the longest song I knew. Pages with lyrics would fall out of my pockets, my gloves.

For the first few years of my travels, I would only record the songs.