Katalena

Katalena deals with the folk music legacy of the Slovene region, recreating and performing it in its own way with a basic presumption that folk music is timeless and vital. Katalena's goal is to revive this tradition, to give it a wave of fresh energy, to pull it out of the dusty national subconsciousness and to publish it in a way that is at ease and unburdened. There are not many experiments of this kind in Slovenia and the result has been a positive surprise. Katalena has 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.

History

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 more or less 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 have performed on all major festivals and venues in Slovenia - Novi Rock Festival, Druga Godba Festival, Lent Festival, Rock Otočec, Carniola Festival, Mediterranean Festival, Izola, Trnfest Festival - and have also performed at several concerts abroad - in Switzerland (Alpentone Festival), Hungary, France, Germany, Austria, Italy, France and Croatia (European Broadcasting Union Festival). In February 2006 they played the Gallus Hall of Cankarjev dom, the biggest concert hall in Slovenia, and in July 2006 they performed at the Rudolstadt Folk Festival in Germany. Some songs from their albums became 'Song of the Week' on national public radio, while a few Katalena videos took prime position in the Slovene video charts. In 2007 Katalena released a new singel called Pastirče mlado and started a successful collaboration with the group of ballet dancers from Slovene National Theatre Maribor. Besides several performances there is also Katalena's 8th music video for Pastirče mlado, showing the fusion of music and the art of dancing.

Members and their solo works

The Katalena line-up didn't change since their beginning and consist 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, which is undoubtedly one of the most active Slovene musician, was recent years a main performer in cabaret Patty Diphusa - Izpovedi porno dive (Confessions of Porno Diva), a theatre show directed by [[Ivana Djilas].

Discography

Katalena so far released five studio albums, starting with (Z)godbe in 2002. This début has 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 rather the first truly conceptual one, due to the fact, that all featured songs have lyrical connection to weeding and weeding related themes. With album Cvik cvak! (2008) Katalena reached further into exploring folk heritage and awaken Resian folk music (Resia is Italian municipality on the boarder with Slovenia known by 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 albums gained great success from media and public and got extremely positive responses from critics. That established Katalena as one of most recognisable and innovative Slovene band 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