Mariia Guraievska was born in Asia, between the icy waters of the Arctic Ocean and Sea of Okhotsk basin, amidst gold mines, in the small Yakutsk town of Ust-Nera Oymyakon. Temperatures in this Siberian mining settlement drop below -70 degrees Celsius in January, making it roughly equivalent to the North Pole in terms of cold.
She was raised in Ukraine, where she completed music school and studied journalism. For years as a child, she was involved with the folk vocal group “Ladowyci”, whose energetic activity ensured them awards in competitions and appearances at Ukranian and Polish folk music festivals. “Ladowyci” based their repertoire on meticulous and long-maintained documentation of the traditional songs of Ukraine's Podolia region.
This authentic musical material, gathered 'with her own hands' during her time working with the group, in the course of several-day summer excursions into little-known and not easily accessible regions of Ukraine, constitutes the basis of the vocalist's repertoire at present, and she has enhanced it with her own, original, jazz-inspired arrangements.
In its repertoire, the group Mariia Guraievska Ethno Jazz Synthesis melds the traditions of folk with the improvisational element of jazz and intense, guitar-based sound of rock. Though its lineup consists of instrumentalists from the younger generation of Poland's jazz scene, who are enjoying progressively more recognition, the group unquestionably owes its originality to this mystique-filled and energetic Ukrainian vocalist.
Mariia Guraievska has drawn from the language of jazz in a wholly unique way to weave its elements into the traditional music of greater Ukraine – a country whose people have for centuries existed at the juncture of Muslim-Orthodox Eastern and Catholic-Protestant Western cultures.
Mariia Guraievska
