Polska Travels: Composing (at) the Crossroads. In search of an itinerant musical home.

Krishna Nagaraja

This Exposition illustrates my artistic doctoral project 'Polska Travels', wherein I use composition and arrangement as practices for the hybridisation of several musical genres, with folk music from Sweden, Finland and Norway and Western art music as points of departure. From its baroque German-Polish origins to the current Nordic local variants, the polska folk dance tune type has enjoyed a history marked by the crossing of geographical, temporal, and societal boundaries. The interdisciplinary study of this phenomenon addresses both theoretical and practical fields, such as musicology, ethnomusicology, music theory, and the performance practice of the local polska styles. The gathered knowledge becomes the basis for of the creation of new music that sits right ‘at’ the crossroads of many genres but further aims at composing ‘the’ crossroads itself, in the form of hybrid, temporary “musical homes” able to negotiate a dynamic dialogue between ever-changing personal identities and external bodies of knowledge. The artistic output is organised in four concerts, each focusing on a different geographic area where the polska thrived, and a CD recording. The written thesis summarises the research findings, taking the string quartet ‘Stringar’ based on the Norwegian springar as a case study to suggest the concept of “personal tradition” inscribed in the open, itinerant field of trans-genre contemporary music.

The field of artistic research in music has recently witnessed an increasing emphasis on interdisciplinary projects. The interstitial space where cultures can meet and communicate has become a favourite centrepiece especially for artists who strive for a synthesis of their diverse influences into a personal creative outcome. Composition occupies a privileged position in this discourse, as it allows the artistic researcher to blend different elements at the primary level of the conception of the musical work itself.

Between 2016 and 2022, a series of four concerts, one CD recording, and a written doctoral thesis have formed the tangible body of my research project, carried out within the framework of the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. The many paths this research has disclosed and developed constitutes the invisible system of interlaced threads that outlives the project, having become a permanent part of my music making.

This exposition offers an insight into Polska Travels through the audio, video, and written material produced during the studies I carried out both within the framework of established research fields and in the exploration of their intersections. Nordic folk traditions, Western art music, and a range of different musical genres and cultural fields are spun to weave a dynamic, ever-changing "musical home", voicing the urge to embrace a broad concept of contemporary music, embedded in an increasingly interconnected cultural world.

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Krishna Nagaraja: Concept and Design

Concert 2

Home

My doctoral project Polska Travels: Composing (at) the Crossroads aims at the musical hybridisation of several musical genres, with Nordic folk and Western art music as points of departure. The research studies the history and development of the Nordic polska tune family, through historical and geographical areas, transferring the collected knowledge into the composition of new pieces that lie right at the intersection of many musical roads. Composing starts at those crossroads, and ultimately composes the crossroads, namely that hybrid interstitial space which connects differences and transcends them.