Oberkas Travel by Oberkas Travel

Oberkas Travel present their long-awaited debut album Oberkas Travel, out November 14 via Tańce.

The quartet delivers a contemporary take on traditional rural Polish music, capturing the spirit of an era, while offering a full-blown whirl. This is how mystical and psychedelic the sound of oberek can be!

The band brings together artists with extraordinarily broad musical horizons. Piotr Domagalski, Jan Emil Młynarski, Mateusz Niwiński and Piotr Zabrodzki have collectively been part of so many projects that listing them all would take a page of text. Their experiences, spanning raw traditional music (in crudo), urban folk, post-war pop, jazz, electronics, and experimental sounds, meet in Oberkas Travel with a shared fascination for the musical traditions of Central Poland. The album also features Maria Siwiec, an outstanding folk singer from Gałki near Przysucha, who has previously performed with the group and now enchants listeners once again with her spirited, distinctive style.

Over the years, the quartet has traveled across Poland, meeting the inheritors of local traditions, learning melodies, and playing together with particular attention to the Radom–Opoczno region. This area still pulses in triple time with the rhythm of the oberek. It's one of the most primal and unique musical forms of Polish lands. The oberek, with its improvised and danceable nature, became the central theme of this project.

While Oberkas Travel’s music is deeply rooted in the 19th century, with each piece evoking a specific place and person on Poland’s cultural map, their journey is global. The project’s rich and colorful sound is shaped by influences from jazz and traditional music traditions across the globe, including those of Southwest Asia and Africa.

This dialogue between eras and continents creates a fertile ground where three centuries of music intertwine. Oberkas Travel reveal a sound we have been cut off from through the twists of history, using a musical language that speaks universally, placing the oberek firmly within the global lexicon of dance music. The result is a captivating ritual: a trance-inducing blend of triple rhythms, bass, and unpredictable melodies.

New dance music from Poland.

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