Tales of bloody murder and trans-Carpathian travails captivate at Ethno Port

For 14 years Ethno Port has been the most ambitious world music festival in Poland. Despite the ongoing global pandemic, the festival's team remained committed to programming international artists. And they succeeded! Amazing concerts took place within two venues inside the Zamek – the neo-Romanesque castle built for the German emperor in the early 20th century – with seats for the audience and facemasks made obligatory.

There was Trio Da Kali from Mali, and Korean folk music newcomers The Sero, but my standouts were a Polish band, Wernyhora, named after a legendary 18th-century Cossack prophet-bard. The trio – Anna Oklejewicz (viola da gamba, fiddle and vielle); Maciej Harna (hurdy-gurdy and jaw harp); and singer Daria Kosiek – bring their own arrangements of traditional songs from the Lemkos and Boykos, two Ruthenian ethnic groups living in the Carpathians. Their minimalistic music works brilliantly as an extension of Kosiek's amazing biały śpiew (a traditional style that literally means 'white singing'), with lyrics relating horror stories of Lemko wives being killed by their bloody husbands, or punishing trans-Carpathian travels in search of that perfect match – tremendous dramatic fuel for mythical reinvention.

Similar terrain was explored by the French group Super Parquet, a combo featuring two folk musicians playing banjo and bagpipes alongside two electronic music producers. With a massive presence on stage, the traditional dances of Auvergne, like a trancey triple-rhythm bourrée, were combined with a hurricane of deep-bass drones and beats. The highlight of their set was the more relaxed tune, 'Adieu' (from their self-titled album, a Top of the World in the April 2020 issue, #156), which tells the a story of a young man leaving his family in search for a better life abroad. This felt all the more relevant considering that the previous day, after weeks of illegal pushbacks waged on refugees situated at the Polish-Belarussian border, the Polish government enacted the first ever state of emergency. In these extremely unsettling times for cultural event producers Ethno Port delivered a breathtaking festival. Hats off!