#1 The word album in the title of this review, when it concerns what Starowski create is not in inverted commas buy accident. I was in doubt (and I still am) about naming the work that they have created when they decided to sing the Macedonian poetry, or more precisely, to sing the love in the Macedonian poetry, or, even more precisely, to sing their love for the love in the Macedonian poetry. Thus, I can easily say a “musical poetry reader” or a “musical reading of the Macedonian poetry” instead of saying album, and I believe I would not be mistaken, because what Starowski has produced is all of this, more or less.
My doubts in granting it a title or naming this piece undoubtedly implies its complex nature, comfortably hidden behind the simplicity of its musical background. The voices of Verica Andreevska Spasović and Verica Nedeska Trajkova are accompanied by Jordan Kostov’s accordion, Dejan Spasović’s oud, tambour and kemane, and Krume Stefanovski’s percussion and… that’s it. In a minimalist, almost cabaret-like way (for example, such as in “Courting”), one can hear an instrument or two in the pieces, while the female voices, one next to the other, or one behind the other, pursue the song. I say they pursue, because they neither sing it (in the classical sense of the word), nor recite it (in the even more classical sense of the word), but they simply – chant the poetry. Starowski has no intention to compose music based on familiar (and less familiar) verses (because poetry is thus placed within the frames of a cliché-like pop-culture concept and is unjustly instrumentalised). Nor do they have the intention to recite familiar (and less familiar) verses on top of a musical background (because poetry is thus banalised to “Don’t Give Up, Ines” tastelessness). Starowski simply chant about what they find the most beautiful and most impressive from the Macedonian poetry – love, and chanting about it they remind us that the poetic word is alive, it is a word that communicates with the reader and listener, but also with the one who utters and sings it.
Starowski enters this communication with the poetic word without pretensions, without premeditation on how this poetic word should be read, without a superior conviction that they are the ones who know how to interpret it truly. They simply let this word carry them. “I am a boat drifting alone / In the uncharted unknown,” says Aco Šopov in his poem “To the Seagull Circling My Head”, which is part of this poetry selection. The listener is caught by surprise by being faced with the (unknown) emotions that the verses bring by the voices or instruments when they sink into a word and rise to another in a second. We thus become aware that a song can never be sang in the same way twice, just as a feeling can never lift us twice with the same force and in the same direction.
“A man without love is a man without a face, without a trace, without a name, without a time, without contents”, said Petre M. Andreevski, the man whose “Denicija” has remained an omni-Macedonian lesson in love poetry. Paying their tribute to him with their reading of “Courting” and “The First Letter” Starowski embrace his preparedness to do everything for love; powerfully, almost like mourning, with a female voice, enlisting his pleas, promises and threats. The Love in the poetry “selected” by Starowski (or in the poetry “selecting” them) is powerful, it awakens, fertilizes, gives birth, regardless of the fact that it is big or small. “A speck of love, a tiny speck, / A speck one can barely see, / But still love, love nonetheless,” as Gane Todorovski says in his poem “Love” which is also part of Starowski’s selection.
“I did as much as I could,” says this very same Gane Todorovski, using the words that also apply to the piece that I am writing about. Let me go back to what I initially said about complexity behind simplicity – these words are far from being a simple remark about the limitations of human creation. “Literature is not just a scream, it is a marathon,” continues he. Thus, Starowski’s songs are not just a one-breath scream on Macedonian poetry – they call us to a poetry marathon, an endless and always new reading. Blaže Koneski (who, of course, is also part of Starowski’s s selection) compares writing poems to embroidering in his “The Embroiderer”, saying that the Macedonian poem is “strict and simple” made of two threads only – the red and the black. However, it is in the simplicity and strictness of the verse where the complexity and multilayered nature of the meanings and emotions hide, just as the ancient, universal and local, genetic messages of our singing ancestors hide in a single folk costume sleeve.
the art is inside
