Dressed head to toe in medieval garb and playing instruments from the days of yore, frontman Alieś Čumakoŭ and his band Stary Olsa weren’t auditioning for Game of Thrones or showing up for a new “Tunic Tuesday” event in New Haven.
Instead, the Belarus-based group — nationally and internationally recognized for its performance of medieval folk music from Eastern Europe as well as Italy and the U.K. — graced Cafe Nine Tuesday night, where an intimate but energized crowd of around 20 had gathered to hear it and opener Orkestar BAM play a double bill.
Bouncing from foot to foot in a heavy red tunic and folksy slippers, Čumakoŭ just could not stay still. Beads of sweat collected at his forehead and ran down his face, leaving tracks across each eye and cheek. Expectant chatter rose around him. He looked through a possible set list, selecting a medieval drinking song that would require not one, but two old world reed instruments.
Lucy Gellman Photos
Founded by bagpiper and vocalist Zmicier Sasnoŭski in 1999, Stary Olsa creates from age-old practices what might be described as a fully drinkable sound, one that flies from stage to crowd in layered, quenching waves of audio. Tuesday night members were in full force, filling the small space with rich, rounded instrumentals as they exchanged cautious banter with the crowd and launched into numbers that ranged from courtly, danceable melodies to raucous drinking songs and tales of love lost.
“You may taste this musical sound as it is,” said Čumakoŭ as he was introducing another piece. The crowd laughed and murmured back in anticipation.
A moment later, audience members could taste the music — a mix of ancient, kazoo- and flute-like reeded sound and thrumming, heartbeat-like percussion that radiated through the floor. From a delicate, stringed lute at the corner of the stage, a honeyed flavor of mead rose up. From an old flute, suggestions of glistening fruit and delicate, imported spices. Two-sided, goblet and marching drums tasted of sweat and dirt, the kind of musical grit that can get stuck between your teeth and is savory anyway.
That alone would have been enough for the set, which stretched itself, not unlike some of the hide-based instruments on which members played, across two hours. But more powerful was the group’s comprehensive understanding of music history, on view when Čumakoŭ announced that members were “getting in a time capsule,” picked up a wing-shaped gusli, and began belting out Pink Floyd and the Beatles.
Moves like that, it seems, aren’t done to say I’m doing this because our band is that good. Rather, they exist to say I’m doing this because you have no idea how much your musical tradition owes its medieval roots. And they work, drumming into us — members of the audience, in this case — how deeply this moment is a small stop on a long musical continuum. A speck, in a night, in a cafe, in New Haven.