Un groupe post-punk polonais dénonce populisme, haine et négation de la Shoah.
Grzegorz Kwiatkowski, chanteur et compositeur de Trupa Trupa – marqué par la déportation de sa famille au camp de Stutthof – parle de la vérité au pouvoir à travers une poésie punk.
Polish band Trupa Trupa brings post-punk and dark poetry to Desert Daze and beyond.
In a backstage garden, Grzegorz Kwiatkowski carried around a large, overflowing plastic bag full of intense cold medicines. The lead singer of the Polish rock band Trupa Trupa had caught a cold from his 8-month-old son before the group’s gig at one of Poland’s most popular summer festivals.
„It takes you somewhere without really going anywhere.”
Steve Lamacq, BBC Radio 6 Music
Trupa Trupa vocalist and songwriter Grzegorz Kwiatkowski — shaped by his ancestors’ imprisonment at Stutthof concentration camp — speaks truth to power through punk poetry.
Popular Polish post-punk band Trupa Trupa rages against growing Polish nationalism, historical revisionism and international Holocaust denial.
“Holocaust denial and antisemitism is rising around the world but, of course, in Poland too. The nature of evil is that it’s immortal… I hope things will get better, but that is why we have to protest.”
The Polish rock band Trupa Trupa, which recently toured the UK and will return in January, are unlike other acts in their readiness to directly tackle perhaps the most troublingly complex element of their country’s history: the Holocaust.
„Trupa Trupa have not been making friends in their native Poland. They come from Gdańsk, that precariously placed city over which history has so often rolled like a tank. Their big theme is collective memory – the way it is distorted, perverted and suppressed for political ends. They have set their faces against a wave of populism, authoritarianism and the duplicity of collective amnesia. They deserve to make more friends in Britain, however. Plenty of acts are doing post-punk right now, and plenty are doing psych. But few are combining the two, which Trupa Trupa do with tautness and skill. The Beatles sing Joy Division oversimplifies them, but doesn’t misrepresent them. At their recent Brighton show they also had moments strikingly akin to Plastic Ono Band. Their sound was condensed and powerful – a muscular, precise rhythm section overlaid with a flurry of ringing guitars. The songs from this year’s Of The Sun album cut to the heart of the dark road down which historical ignorance or revisionism leads. If this doesn’t sound much fun, be assured, Trupa Trupa are above all a cracking rock group, and they played a blinder. One day, if there’s any justice, the people claiming to have attended these early gigs will far outnumber the people who actually did.”
Four out of five!
„Filip Łobodziński: Kim jesteś w momencie, gdy słyszysz to pytanie: muzykiem czy poetą? Czy jesteś nimi cały czas naraz, czy jednym lub drugim na przemian, czy tylko okazjonalnie wpadasz do Poezji lub Muzyki, a na co dzień Twoja tożsamość mieszka zupełnie gdzie indziej?
„The Gdansk quartet rail against rightwing hate speech – and have uncovered a dark secret about their country in the Nazi era.
Grzegorz Kwiatkowski, the singer, guitarist and co-songwriter of Polish post-punks Trupa Trupa, is thinking of home. “At first, we said that our environment had nothing to do with our music, but we were wrong,” he says of Gdańsk, the Baltic city the band hail from – and the site of the second world war’s first battle. “The city has a tragic history.”
Jak to się stało, że fanem małego psychodelicznego zespołu z Gdańska jest Henry Rollins oraz dziennikarze Pitchforka i Timesa? I dlaczego Grzegorz Kwiatkowski pisze wiersze o eugenice?
Mateusz Witkowski: Dziennikarze niemal zawsze poruszają w wywiadach z tobą trudne i wielkie tematy: II wojna światowa, sztuka, demokracja. Nie masz czasem ochoty porozmawiać o głupotach?
Grzegorz Kwiatkowski: Coś w tym jest, też mnie to trochę uwiera. Prywatnie jesteśmy zwyczajnymi, dosyć radosnymi ludźmi, uwielbiamy się bawić, rzucać absurdalne żarty. W zespole panuje raczej pythonowski klimat. Z tym wszystkim miesza się jednak pesymizm i grobowy ciężar, który jest chyba w muzyce Trupy Trupa. Nasze czasy są odrobinę podobne. Horror i prawdziwy dramat mieszają się z absurdem, radością i nonsensem.