Katalena

The musical group Katalena represents a phenomenon on the Slovene popular music scene, owing to its unique musical expression and philosophy towards preserving our domestic folk music legacy. Encompassing Slovene folklore music with modern vibes of rock, jazz and ethno, the band has revived the local traditional musical heritage and enriched it with a fresh energy, making the music sound new and colourful. If you are yearning for a journey through the exquisite Slovene musical past, visiting a Katalena concert is the right thing for you.

Background

The band members met quite accidentally in the Slovene countryside village of Črmošnjice in Bela krajina in summer 2001. Coming from different musical backgrounds – from classic rock (Sfiltrom, Terra mystica, Bast), folk (Terrafolk), blues (Moj boogie band) and trip hop (Melodrom) – its musicians experimented for a week with several old Slovene folk tunes they had discovered in the archives of the Institute of Ethnomusicology. Soon they had grown into a regular music group, gaining quite a lot of attention in a very short time. They made their first public appearance in December 2001 at the Novi Rock ("New Rock") Festival in Ljubljana, and their first individual concert was, to everyone's surprise, completely sold out.

Performances

Katalena has played all major festivals and venues in Slovenia, including Novi Rock Festival, Druga Godba Festival, Lent Festival, Rock Otočec, Carniola Festival, Mediterranean Festival, Izola, Trnfest Festival, Zmaj 'ma mlade Festival and Kamfest. In 2009 they sold out the Gallus Hall in Cankarjev dom with a special event including 13 ballet dancers, the same year the band did a audio-visual concert as a part of Animateka Festival. For that they contributed music and a crew of individual Slovene animators did short animated films, based on a specific song, which were screened through the concert.

Katalena also has an enviable list of performances abroad. They have played in New York, Switzerland, Hungary, France, Germany, Austria, Italy, France and Croatia.

Members and their solo works

The Katalena line-up hasn't change since their beginning and consists of Vesna Zornik (vocal), Polona Janežič (keyboards, backing vocals), Tibor Mihelič (bass, backing vocals), Boštjan Narat (guitar, mandolin, backing vocals), Robert Rebolj (drums, percussion), and Boštjan Gombač (clarinet, flutes, percussion, backing vocals).

As for the members we can say, they are extremely productive even outside Katalena, working on other music projects and solo material. Boštjan Narat made a highly recognisable album as a singer-songwriter in 2010 called Strah je odveč, the same year Vesna Zornik released her tango oriented solo album TangoApasionada. Polona Janežič plays keyboards in Melodrom, and Boštjan Gombač, undoubtedly one of the most active Slovene musicians, was in recent years a main performer in the cabaret Patty Diphusa – Izpovedi porno dive [Confessions of Porno Diva], a theatre show directed by Ivana Djilas.

Discography

Katalena has so far released five studio albums, starting with (Z)godbe in 2002. This début firmly established their further musical attitude towards modern song covers of Slovene traditional folk music which they continued on the second album Babje leto (2004). The third one Kmečka ohcet (2006) was the first truly conceptual one, due to the fact that all the featured songs have a lyrical connection to weddings and wedding-related themes. With the album Cvik cvak! (2008) Katalena reached further into exploring folk heritage and awakened Resian folk music (Resia is Slovene community living in a remote area close to the border in Italy, known for its specific culture, language and folk heritage). On their fifth album Noč čarovnic (2011) the band covered some poems with folk motives of finest Slovene poets, like Dane Zajc and Svetlana Makarovič.

Nevertheless, all of the albums garnered great success from the media and the public and got extremely positive responses from the critics. That established Katalena as one of most recognisable and innovative Slovene bands in the past decade.

External links

Gallery

Audiovisual Concert: Katalena Animated (Avdio-vizualni koncert: Animirana Katalena), Katalena concert at Stara Elektrarna - Old Power Station, Animateka Festival, 2009.

Slovene folk band Katalena performing at Križanke during Druga godba Festival in Ljubljana, 2008

Katalena group portrait by Luka Kaše, 2011

Katalena performing at Kino Šiška Centre for Urban Culture, 2013

Katalena group portrait by Ivian Kan Mujezinović, 2014