Invented Folksongs by Anna Pidgorna

Invented Folksongs
Anna Pidgorna
Ludovico Ensemble

'Folk music' is an interesting piece of terminology because of how slippery it can be. The debut full-length of greater Vancouver-based composer and vocalist Anna Pidgorna, "Invented Folksongs", probes this contradiction through the lens of her Ukrainian heritage. Pidgorna has long incorporated musical elements that reflect her ancestry in her concert works but since visiting and studying traditional music in Ukraine, her work has aimed for a more embodied understanding of these traditions. Especially since these trips ignited her interest in singing her own work. Pidgorna has ultimately found a deeply personal approach to vocalization, drawing on Ukrainian folk, but pushing these gestures past their traditional origins, while blending them with classical and contemporary singing techniques.

Her idiosyncratic singing matches her compositional outlook. Invented Folksongs (composed from 2015-18) consists of four songs ranging from nine to eleven minutes based on texts by Pidgorna herself plus two shorter intervening instrumental "meditations." Pidgorna's bold, sonorous voice is accompanied by members of the Ludovico Ensemble, whose present incarnation employs percussion, cimbalom, prepared piano, violin, cello, bass, each of which has an analogous instrument in Ukrainian traditions.

The result isn't easily classified and this is the music's strength. It's neither contemporary music peppered with folk tropes, nor folk with fancied-up arrangements. Instead, Pidgorna manages a thorough and thoughtful hybrid of the sounds, shape and ethos of these two worlds, where neither genre feels like the dominant one. Even her lyrics are built from folkloric imagery, yet portray stories rooted in contemporary feminist subject matter— antiquated gendered pressures in society, queer female sexuality, as well as the bleak true story of Oksana Makar, which Pidgorna has woven throughout a popular folk song on "Teach Your Daughters."

The album’s illustrator Olha Kriuchkovskav mirrors these themes in her images. She also hails from Pidgorna’s own hometown of Kherson, and had to flee the Russian occupation in 2022. Meanwhile designer Roksolana Uhryniuk extends the red vein-like lines found in Kriuchkovska's images, reflecting the music and poetry’s vulnerable intensity.

Invented Folksongs is as powerful as it is imaginative, especially in the era of Putin's ongoing military encroachment on Ukraine. Exploring diasporic identity through the bending of traditional musical materials, it also makes an articulate case for the notion, as Pidgorna states that "folk traditions are not museum pieces, they are living, breathing practices that are constantly morphing and reinventing themselves in response to their time and circumstances."

Redshift was founded in Vancouver, Canada with a focus on championing the music of contemporary composers.

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