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Well, the NEGRA DONNA is Rozalia.
Negra Donna means Black Lady, and Rozalia has
a wardrobe full of black clothes, she only wears black clothes
and she used to have black hair before.
Also she’s been composing songs since childhood.
I always wanted to do it. I’ve been fond of composing songs
and writing lyrics since childhood
We come from a family of Catholic artists, meaning our
parents deal with sacred arts.
Our home is filled with sacred sculptures, angels,
and figures of Christ. Therefore, all of it has inevitably influenced us.
Our mum is a sculptor, and Dad is a violinist, working in an opera house.
Besides, when we were small girls, he used to take us to all sorts of operas.
We also spent time on the other side, during rehearsals.
It was, I think, a world of intense feelings, emotional experiences.
I also remember those beautiful dresses.
I believe it was the first source of our inspirations.
We really sang entire arias, Rozalia sang Carmen, we both loved Tosca.
We kept on listening to the same operas, non-stop.
That’s one thing, and the other thing is that our home abounded with music.
Light music did not exist in our home.
Dad had a great collection of symphonies, so when we felt like dancing,
or wanted to celebrate our birthdays – we simply used his records
and put on Mum’s dresses, trying to find the right beat to dance to,
trying to understand it, somehow…
And then, I think it was my last year at elementary school,
I began to borrow some pop music cassettes from my friends,
and that music seemed so terribly uncomplicated, so easy!
The first band I really listened to was Pink Floyd, for instance.
Anyway, I used to listened to many various bands.
I also wanted to play that sort of music, just like those bands did.
I always wanted to do it. Besides, I began
composing my own songs, writing my own lyrics…
I find it an important part of life.
So, I guess that our music has some Christian roots,
some classical ones, as we both attended music school.
Moreover, Rozalia used to listen to a lot of black metal,
EBM, and even more of the dark and heavy stuff.
So, the combination of that whole lot altogether
makes up our inspiration.
I love going to cemeteries.
That’s where I meet up with my friends.
We just sit there and talk. We do nothing bad.
We deal with interesting topics, drink beer and hang out together.
I really like cemeteries. By the way, at the Rakowicki Cemetery,
there are many beautiful statues of angels,
and their wings are of exactly the same shape as mine.
And I found several angels there,
wearing long dresses such as mine.
So that’s where I had the idea it would be cool to look just like them.
We’ve had these wings only for a year.
We planned to go to MediaWave Festival in Sanok where we have
a steady following and friends of our band.
We wanted to do something exceptional for them.
Anyway, we had previously begun to enrich
our concerts with visual projections, meaning photographic slides.
And it works because our music, although heavy, is rather peaceful.
So, it’s good to have audiences become more absorbed through the visual arts.
There were slides prepared, already, and we thought
it would be beautiful to start wearing wings,
especially because in our music there are many
metaphysical and spiritual aspects which
could be symbolized by our wings.
Besides, these wings seem to look ambiguous,
as on one hand they are large and angelic,
and on the other hand they are black and a bit gloomy.
Rozalia purposely walked around the Park Planty,
and like a witch, she collected crow’s feathers.
Then, we were sitting home with a huge heap of crow’s feathers,
all three of us, including my sisters Tereska and Rozalia,
gluing all those feathers to cardboard wings before that concert in Sanok.
For me, music is extremely important in life.
Especially when it’s my music and my message,
including my life’s philosophy.
All that I want to convey, not to others, but in general.
Because I mostly do it for myself. Yeah, that’s right.
My music contains a lot of suffering.
Particularly, my lyrics deal with suffering.
I sing about it. This suffering’s not always the same,
but it’s still one of the most creative things.
In the moments of my greatest suffering,
I wrote the most beautiful pieces.
It’s very healthy and very positive that we try to avoid suffering,
at any cost. We simply want to get rid of suffering in our lives.
Unfortunately, it’s not possible.
This way or another, suffering will always touch you in some way.
All we can do about our suffering is our music.
Because you can rebel against it, absolutely anesthetize it,
and we can also forge it into something very creative.
That’s my dad’s creed, which is personally very close to mine.
Art is the transformation of suffering into beauty. [6:38-7:16]
CAST:
Cecylia Malik
Rozalia Malik
Material produced
at mROCKfest 2009
in Ostroda POLAND
Script and filmmaking:
Joanna Pruszynska
Photography and editing:
Alicja Szczypta
English translation:
Zdzislaw “The Bat” Zabierzewski and Darryl Fuller
a2.mukor.net
www.alicaworks.eu