Ingemar Johansson Reviews "Unbounded" CD by Wolf Krakowski

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Ingemar Johansson's review of "Unbounded" CD by Wolf Krakowski
for Swedish netzine Yelah translated.

> The Swedish original is on URL
> http://www.yelah.net/articles/ingema0809

Diane Emmett
CEO, Kame'a Media

>
>
> --------------------------------
>
> Wolf Krakowski?s Boogie
>
> "My mama told me
> About great tribulation
> The daughter of
> A homeless nation
> Everyone who survived
> Is a sanctification"
>
> Those lines are from "Head'Em Off At The Pass" on the recent CD
> "Unbounded" (Kame?a Media, KAM 7002), by poet, singer and guitarist Wolf
> Krakowski. They are, as everything else on this album, profoundly
> personal and contain, like the very music on it, a clue to the
> inspiration behind Krakowski's art.

> The music on "Unbounded" may be labeled modern country-blues - Willie
> Nelson comes to mind easily - but there are also strains of dark,
> original blues that remind you of the fact that this man has played with
> Mississippi bluesman Big Joe Williams.
>
> Yes, he did.  On the whole Wolf Krakowski has led a life that seems to be
> extraordinary in the Jewish Music World.  He is the son of Polish Jews
> and was born in an Austrian Displaced Persons' Camp called Saalfelden
> Farmach in 1947. Shortly afterwards his family migrated to Eskilstuna,
> Sweden.  Here the Krakowski family stayed until 1954 ("My dad liked
> Sweden, but my mom longed for a larger Jewish community"), when they went
> to "Di Goldene Medine", and settled in "The Junction", one of the
> working-class quarters of Toronto.
>
> Music was an early love in young Wolf's life.  In an e-mail interview he
> tells me: " I developed my musical 'skills' out of  the most basic
> resources - a $13.00 guitar (my first) and what I could pick up around me
> over the years.  I can still see my  mother opening her little purse to
> pay for it; a lot of money for my family in those days.  She drew the
> line at lessons, though; there was simply not enough money in the family
> budget for the $2.00 weekly fee!  Like Proust's madeleines, the smell of
> that guitar is engraved on my sensorium forever."

> Later on he ran away from home and joined a traveling carnival, came back
> and attended a university for two years, grew tired of studying and went
> on the road again, became what in Wolf?s first language, Yiddish, is
> called a "luftmentsh", --a person with no fixed occupation -- played with
> blues and folk musicians wherever he could, engaged himself
> in Street Theatre and a Food Co-op.  In between all this he worked as a
> painter, carpenter and guitar builder.  And in 1994-95 as
> director-videographer for Steven Spielberg's Survivors of the Shoah
> Visual History Foundation, logging over one hundred survivor
> testimonies.   All this shines through on "Unbounded." This is basic
> music with "street credibility," as they say in the States.
>
> Some years ago his CD "Transmigrations" was issued.  Here Wolf presents
> chosen parts of the East European Jewish song treasure in blues and
> reggae arrangements.  It is, as it should be, all in Yiddish and the
> result is a singular and beautiful musical experience.  I have already
> reviewed it on the Chilli site.  Here one might meditate on the  thought
> that this is how East and Central European Jewish musicians could have
> sounded today, if only not Hitler and his pack had intervened.
>
> On "Unbounded," as on "Transmigrations," Wolf has had the good taste to
> gather around him the country-rock group "The Lonesome Brothers," where
> multi-instrumentalist Jim Armenti especially shines.  He plays guitar,
> mandolin, violin, saxophone and bouzouki and the inter-play between him
> and Krakowski is most congenial, believe me.  Among the many other fine
> musicians I would also like to mention trumpeter Raphe Malik, a man who
> certainly knows how to play an obbligato.
>
> Above all, however, it is Wolf Krakowski himself who captivates my
> attention here.  His expressive, somewhat light but still full-toned
> tenor carries deeply moving ballads like "Well, My Heart" as well as
> somewhat sharper tunes like "Boogie in Motion" with the same self-evident
> accuracy.
>
> On the whole, there is a tangible sensibility in Krakowski?s material
> here.  Presence, stylistic pregnancy and musical concentration are the
> hallmarks of this CD.  Whether Wolf interprets the bluest melancholy, as
> in "Carnival Song" ("Seems like all the good things / Slip right through
> these hands...") or expresses irrepressible joy of living as on "The
> Power" ("Everybody got the power / To put an end to strife / Everybody
> got the power / To live their life / Everybody got the power / To rise
> above / Everybody got the power / To give sweet, sweet love"), it is at
> once clear to us that this is brought to us by a man who has been there,
> who knows what he sings about and who is able to find new and strong
> words for the eternally human -- love as well as the feeling of
> hopelessness.

> It?s not easy to find the records of Wolf Krakowski, especially not in
> Europe. Tidbits may be tasted and useful addresses fetched at the home
> site of Kame?a Media.

> Here, at last, some words to accompany you on your way:
>
> "No technical difficulty
> No police state
> Can take the boogie out of
> Me and my mate
> No pound of flesh
> No uptight emotion
> Can stop the people
> With a boogie in motion"
>
> Ingemar Johansson

>

> Links to my Swedish Wolf-site:
> http://home4.swipnet.se/~w-40997/WolfEng.htm
> and to that of Kame?a Media: http://www.kamea.com

Lyrics Copyright Wolf Krakowski
Rajah Blue Music (SOCAN)


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