KAYAH

January 2014 Kayah "Transoriental Orchestra" debuts at no. 12 on WMCE -

Kayah has treated her fans to musical eclecticism which is a new experience also for herself. Inspired by her travels and new acquaintances, she has decided to open herself to the diversity and exoticism of the world.
The whole Transoriental Orchestra project has been developed for the purposes of the “Singer’s Warsaw” Festival. During this project Kayah has cooperated with Atanas Valkov, a film score composer and music producer, and multinational bands playing such unusual instruments as dulcimer, santur, oud, saz, lutes, flutes and pipes and introducing many other extraordinary sounds.
The artist has sung in Hebrew, Yiddish, Ladino and Arabic. It was a true “school of life” for her. “I think everyday of our lives we learn something new... When working on this record, I have learnt a lot about myself. I didn’t know that I am such a hard-working person. I've always considered myself a lazybones. I was born on Sunday, 5th of November, by the way – the day of this record’s release” – she told Jawdiga Polus from RMF Classic radio.
She has also spent a lot of time with headphones in her ears, diligently learning the pronunciation and accents. When she was working on the song promoting the film The Year of the Tiger, the greatest difficulty for her was Chinese. “I spent two weeks practising the pronunciation with a lady from China. Recently I had a pleasure to sing a song in Romani for a movie Papusza and I have to say it was a huge challenge. The song was very difficult, both in rhythm and lyrics. As regard to the Transoriental Orchestra record, I think the hardest language was Hebrew, because I've had a tendency to pronounce hard ‘h’ since childhood. I always used to say ‘c-hhh-łopcy’ [Polish boys] and was reprimanded. In Hebrew there are sounds ‘hy’ and ‘hyhaa’ and even now, when I'm trying to demonstrate that soft ‘ha’, I find it terribly difficult. So, I must have made a lot of pronunciation errors in El Eliyah and Hava Nagila, but I think they are minor and acceptable” – said Kayah.
The record is full of Balkan, Persian, Slavic, Jewish and African sounds. The artist has emphasized that the result is beyond her wildest dreams.

Kayah puts on various masks. “Sometimes I am a Sephardi with a touch of flamenco and sometimes a kind of Arabic Sephardi, full of longing. Once I am a Brazilian woman, as my version of Hava Nagila has been arranged in batucada style. In another song I am hot-tempered Rebeca” – explains the vocalist. However, these are only masks behind which hides her true self.
Kayah never rests on her laurels. She has been always looking for new ways of expression for her music. She has admitted that she finally feels mature enough to understand that this world is beautiful in its diversity – “the diversity that I absolutely respect. The diversity that absolutely inspires me.” She has also added that she is „satisfied with the final result of the project. Oh, well. I am absolutely proud that I dared to use Jewish themes because I think that since the movie Pokłosie it is perhaps too inconvenient and unpopular topic.” -

What is Kayah like this time? Very different. So, first of all – hats off! She has risked her recognisability, career to date and celebrity status to record an album on which even her own voice sounds differently from everything she recorded before. It is no mean feat. Apparently, the idea came to her mind when she was working on the concert as part of the “Singer’s Warsaw” Festival. She had a flirtation with ethnic sounds before, for example on the album recorded with Goran Bregovic. However this time, instead of playing with exotic aesthetics, she has decided to go the whole way. It is a journey through cultures from several regions of the world (although mostly from the Mediterranean Basin). Kayah sings in Hebrew, Arabic and Ladino. It is not trashy folk, but reinterpretation in the spirit of world music. This is why in Aman Minush Middle East instruments meet club rhythms, El Eliyah turns into Jamaican dub and even the tired old Hava Nagila has been rearranged as a drums-filled samba. - Robert Sankowski