Marek Grechuta

Biography

In October 1967, at the student song festival in Kraków, an architecture student walked on stage with “Tango Anawa” and took second place among the vocalists. It was Marek Grechuta’s public musical debut.

He was born on 10 December 1945 in Zamość. In his childhood the family moved to Chylice near Warsaw, where a church organist gave him his first music lessons; in 1956 they returned to Zamość. From an early age he learned to play the piano, and he finished the Jan Zamoyski secondary school. In 1963 he entered the architecture programme at Kraków University of Technology.

As a student he met the composer Jan Kanty Pawluśkiewicz, and in 1966 they founded the architects’ cabaret Anawa (the name goes back to the French en avant, “forward”). It soon turned into a band that accompanied Grechuta at his performances. At the National Festival of Polish Song in Opole he received the journalists’ prize for the song “Serce” (1968) and the television prize for “Wesele” (1969). With Anawa he recorded two albums: Marek Grechuta & Anawa (1970) and “Korowód” (1971). The song “Korowód” won him the main prize of the Opole festival in 1971. In 1969 he played a small part in Andrzej Wajda’s film Hunting Flies. After the second album he left Anawa and founded the group WIEM (W Innej Epoce Muzycznej, “In a Different Musical Era”). With it he recorded “Droga za widnokres” and “Magia obłoków”: music with elements of jazz-rock and poems by contemporary poets, among them Tadeusz Nowak, Tadeusz Śliwiak, Ryszard Krynicki and Mieczysław Jastrun. Poetry was, on the whole, his main material. He sang Mickiewicz and Bolesław Leśmian, and in 1976 he turned again to Pawluśkiewicz and wrote music to texts by Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz (Witkacy).

In 1977, at the 15th Opole festival, his song “Hop – szklankę piwa” received the Grand Prix, and Krystyna Janda performed his “Guma do żucia”. In the same year, with Krzysztof Jasiński and Pawluśkiewicz, he created the musical “Szalona lokomotywa” (The Crazy Locomotive) after Witkacy; it was staged from 1977 to 1980, including at the STU Theatre in Kraków and at the Spodek arena in Katowice. From 1976, for almost ten years, he worked with the Kraków club Piwnica pod Baranami (The Cellar Under the Rams).

Not everything was warmly received. The public greeted the 1979 record of songs to poems by Nowak, written for the stage production “Zapach łamanego chleba”, coolly. In 1981, however, came “Śpiewające obrazy”, again with Anawa: songs inspired by paintings by Van Gogh, Picasso, Degas, Monet, Renoir and Wyspiański, together with music for the production of “Othello”. To my mind, this album shows better than any other how music and painting went side by side for him.

Grechuta himself painted, although there is less information on this side of his work. His paintings were shown in exhibitions in Kraków (1981), Bytom (1984) and Myślenice (1986). He was also interested in sculpture and philosophy. In 1985 he appeared in the film Witkacy’s Tumor.

In 1984, together with Krystyna Janda, Grechuta recorded the album “W malinowym chruśniaku” to poems by Leśmian. He returned to his own texts in 1986: in 1987 came “Wiosna – ach to ty”, with the hit of the same title and fragments of music for stage productions. At that time he also wrote the music for a production of “Cinderella” after Jan Brzechwa. Then followed “Krajobraz pełen nadziei” (1989), children’s songs recorded in 1991 with actors of the Old Theatre in Kraków and the children’s choir Gama, and “Dziesięć ważnych słów” (1994): he called these songs “the ten commandments of modern man”. In 2003 he recorded a cover of “Kraków” with the group Myslovitz, and in 2004 he released “Niezwykłe miejsca”, with songs about places that had enchanted him. Supporters of the football club Korona Kielce regard his “Dni, których nie znamy” as their unofficial anthem.

His awards include the Silver Cross of Merit (1979), the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta (2000), the Golden Fryderyk for artistic achievement (2001) and the gold medal “Gloria Artis” for services to culture (2005). In 2006, at the 43rd Opole festival, he was given the Grand Prix.

Grechuta died on 9 October 2006 in Kraków. The farewell began in St Mary’s Church: as the coffin was carried out, applause broke out and his song “Ocalić od zapomnienia” was heard. He was buried on 17 October in the Alley of the Distinguished at Rakowicki Cemetery, and in 2007 a monument was unveiled over the grave.