Aga Ujma at St David's Historic Sanctuary
Aga Ujma is a captivating individual, both her music and personality brim with a childlike openness but also a hint of a fairytale darkness beneath the autumnal warmth. Her sound follows the contemporary folk cannon of Bjork, Múm, Eivør, CocoRosie and Current 93, blending traditional folk with minimal avant-garde production methods and Eastern instrumentation. Her glacial vocals, underpinned by the delicate plucking of an Indonesian sasando, make her EP a beautiful homage to two very different places that are close to her heart. What stuck with Aga most about Indonesian musicians was their willingness to reinvent traditional music and do ‘crazy’ things with it. This kind of modernity, she says, is not possible with traditional Polish folk music. In Poland, folk music has such a revered status that to play around with it too much is considered offensive. This experimental approach to traditional folk, blending cultures together in a delicate arrangement makes Aga’s music a one of a kind insight into the curiosity of musical exploration.
Programming descriptions are generated by participants and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of SXSW.