Dudi sings the blues

The Rawa Blues Festival in Katowice will begin Oct. 6.
By : Celia Barnes

   It doesn’t take much to make Irek Dudek blue – TV, vodka, or unrequited love to name a few things. Depression like this is an occupational hazard when you’re one of Poland’s leading blues musicians.

   For the past 36 years, Dudek – easily recognizable thanks to his signature burnished head – has been singing the blues about all things Polish. And for the past 21 of those years, he’s been the driving force behind the Rawa Blues Festival (http://www.rawablues.com) in Katowice, Central Europe’s largest blues festival, which happens on Oct. 6 this year.

   Around 5,000 people attend the annual event, along with a brace of international and Polish blues acts. This year Dudek has even managed to convince classic U.S. blues band Canned Heat to headline the event.

   “They have never been to Poland before,” said Dudek proudly. “It’s an exclusive just for the Rawa Blues Festival.”

   But Dudek, a youthful 50 year old, said the blues are having a crisis of their own in Poland. The Rawa Blues Festival is usually broadcast live on television, but this year it won’t be. And Dudek says it’s rare to hear a blues song on the radio these days.

   “There is a general opinion that blues is old- fashioned music,” he said. “But it’s not: it’s still developing and changing.”

   Back in the late 1980s, Dudek and one of his numerous bands, Shakin’ Dudi, were top of the pops in Poland. At that time, society was going through its own type of collective blues thanks to the desperation of the crumbling communist government. It inspired Dudek to write songs about things like hunger, love and sadness.

   One song in particular, called “10 minutes to 1,” is about the communist regulation that shops selling alcohol could only open for business at 1 p.m.

   But these days, with a stable government, a market economy and an inexhaustible flow of Western goodies in the shops, Dudek has had to look elsewhere for his inspiration.

   “Now what I sing is not so much about politics; it’s about people’s habits – what they do and what’s inside them,” Dudek said.

   “Now I have to search for the inspiration that is more deep – but, of course, the lyrics still refer to reality and comment on reality.”

   Like his new (and still-to-be-released) tune about the large number of new hypermarkets in Poland.

   “I sing about a situation as if people were going to church, but they are going to the supermarket and they are praying and putting their donations in the cash registers,” he said.

   Another new and unreleased song, called Morella, is about a man’s unrequited love for one of the female characters on a TV soap.

   “I think the point is not to take everything seriously and not to criticize everything,” Dudek said. “I treat it with a sense of humor and present it from the other point of view. It has better results, rather than criticizing something.”

   And what will he sing about in the future? Poland’s accession to the European Union perhaps?

   “Maybe I will,” he said with a laugh. “Maybe I will.”