Polska Travels

Polska Travels is a journey across space, time and styles on the wings of the most popular Nordic folk dance tune, the polska, used as basis for new arrangements and compositions.

From its early Baroque origins to the present-day regional variants, the polska has enjoyed one of the most diverse developments known in European folk music: a history of migration, evolution, contamination, crossing of geographical and social boundaries. The question of how to approach this phenomenon and combine it with external elements in the creative work is approached from my threefold artistic research standpoint in folk, baroque and contemporary music.

Each of the four doctoral concerts articulates the ongoing dialogue between these three elements with a different interaction, and focuses on a different geographical/temporal frame: the Polish-German baroque origins, Finland, Sweden, and Norway. A CD featuring the two last doctoral compositions concludes the artistic outcome series.

The written work analyses one of these pieces, addressing several underlying research topics such as the history of the polska, the discourse of “folk” and “art” music, the necessity of mixed methodological approaches in multi-disciplinary projects, the quest for a personal musical language inspired by established traditions experienced as an outsider.

Krishna Nagaraja is a doctoral student in the Arts Study Programme at the MuTri Doctoral School.