KATALENA

Katalena met in summer 2001 in a Slovene countryside village of Črmošnjice in Bela krajina.  For a week they were playing different old Slovenian folk tunes discovered in the archives of the Ethno-Musicological Institute of Ljubljana.
Katalena deals with the legacy in folk music of the Slovene area, recreating and performing it in its’ own way. The basic presumption to the work of the group is faith in the timelessness of the folk music, which is, according to the band's opinion, still a part of young people’s lives and not as dead remains, but as a vital tradition. The goal of Katalena is to revive this tradition, give it a wave of fresh energy, to pull it out of the dusty national subconscious and publish it in a way that is at ease and unburdened. There are not many experiments of this kind in Slovenia and the result was a positive surprise. Katalena created a very special mixture of rhythms, temperament, of the old with the new. In their music heritage rock and ethno rhythms meet.  A dash of jazz is added. In short: when making rearrangements, basically everything is allowed.
 
In the seventh year the band finished 4th album with the title Cvik cvak in may 2008! The new album is entirely dedicated to the musical heritage of the Resia valley. The big presentation took place on May 28th in Križanke summer theatre of Ljubljana, at the closing of the Druga Godba festival. The enlistment of the songs on the new album is very diverse, and therefore the album functions as a musical reflection, or a collection of musical essays on a given subject. The remote alpine valley of Resia is placed in the western Julian Alps in the Italian state territory. It is a small community of approximately 1200 people in 7 villages, that speak a very special language. It is actually a dialect, whose grammar is very different from Slovenian and is full of archaic words, that is don't used anymore.
The album Cvik cvak! is being published by Dallas records.


“Katalena is the most inspirational voice of the 21st century Slovene folk music soundtrack.”
Katarina Juvančič, journalist and ethnomusicologist
 
Katalena are:
Vesna Zornik: 
vocals


Polona Janežič
: keyboards, 
backing vocals


Boštjan Gombač:
 clarinet, flutes, percussion, 
backing vocals


Tibor Mihelič Syed:
 bass, 
backing vocals


Boštjan Narat: 
guitar, mandolin, backing vocals


Robert Rebolj
: drums, percussion


Link:
www.katalena.net
www.myspace.com/katalenaslo

Contact for Slovenia:
Mojca Zupanič / info@katalena.net / tel: +386 41 924 515