Marzanna (in Polish), is a Baltic and Slavic goddess associated with seasonal rites based on the idea of winter's death and rebirth and dreams. The rite involves preparing an effigy in female clothing, and either setting it on fire or drowning in a river (or both). This is often performed during a field trip by children in kindergarten and primary schools. The effigy, often made by the children themselves, can range in size from a puppet to a life-size dummy. This ritual represents the end of the dark days of winter, the victory over death, and the welcoming of the spring rebirth.
Since the project was due the 20th of March and spring starts the next day it reminded me of one of my favourite traditions of Poland. Drowning of the Marzanna - which was explained up ahead what it looks like.
I wanted to recreate the sound landscape of the happening with slightly chilly notes in it to disturb the listener of the audio and making it hard for them to focus on the major voice explaining the rite.
What is happening in the audio?
Audio starts off with a sound of a field, wind, river and many feet walking past grass along with a chatter of children. The listener feels like a part of the trip going to the river while the whole scenery gets disturbed by distant, not recognizable whisper/voice. Then another voice rises from the chatter of children speaking in Polish which is used as an anchor on which listener can focus on among all the chaos. However, it ends the talking of children with harsh, loud word finishing it’s monologue.
Then the doll of Marzanna is lit on fire and the familiar, english voice starts to explain the whole idea behind the ritual. Godess’ doll is being dropped into the water and then another chaos and sound disturbance happens as if the Marzanna herself protests to be killed. Everything however is silenced with final last word and listener is left alone, in silence with only field noises and river flowing.
I recorded myself speaking both in Polsih and English repeating different names for Marzanna in not only Polish but also Russian, Czech, Slovakian, Ukrainian, Lithuanian and few other Slavic countries. I also tried to record walking on the grass, lighting the lighter and dropping something into the water to get a splash. I also used samples from the internet for field/wind noises and river flowing because it is really hard to record such audio in Toronto. That’s one obstacle I had to deal with, since Poland is full of nature and lots of fields with tranquil audio landscape. Toronto is a huge metropolis of concrete, cars and little nature whatsoever.
Editing it in the Reaper was fairly easy and enjoyable for me. If I had time I would work more on better sound of disturbing noises and voices so they feel even more deformed and creepy.
