The music of a soul singer who faded into obscurity after leaving Poland more than four decades ago has been rediscovered thanks to the efforts of a teenage internet sleuth and two record labels.
Renata Lewandowska, known as the “Polish Janis Joplin”, performed at renowned festivals and working alongside leading Polish artists, but struggled to break into the mainstream. Now her first ever album, featuring previously unheard songs found in radio archives, has been released.
In 2015, 14-year-old Krystian Zieliński saw one of Lewandowska’s archival performances on television and began to look for her works. Some time later, the singer’s daughter-in-law heard about Zieliński’s research.
After contacting Lewandowska – who was now living in the United States – Zieliński began to upload her songs onto YouTube and Soundcloud, where they were spotted by two independent record labels, The Very Polish Cut Outs and Astigmatic Records.
The labels collaborated on a joint release of Lewandowska’s songs to finally release her first album, “Dotyk” (meaning “Touch”), featuring songs recorded between 1974 and 1978 discovered in the Polskie Radio archives.
“Krystian has done a titanic and truly pioneering job,” Łukasz Wojciechowski, from Astigmatic Records, told Glośniej, a music website. “He was the first to become seriously interested in Renata Lewandowska, then for several months he contacted various entities to find out about her fate.”
“It was he who finally reached her first, putting her songs on Soundcloud and convincing the artist that the album was worth publishing. Without all of this, we would have ever got to this material.”
Lewandowska, who was inspired to sing after hearing recordings by Aretha Franklin, began her career performing in student music clubs in Warsaw. She was spotted by composer Juliusz Loranc, who suggested that she join the Quorum ensemble.
At the National Festival of Polish Song in Opole in 1970, Quorum won an award for one of their performances. Following this success, Lewandowska also performed in another ensemble, Grupa I, before embarking on a solo career. She recorded songs for Polskie Radio as well as performing at major festivals in Poland.
Whilst she was often seen as a “big beat” (a genre in Poland and other Eastern bloc countries related to rock and roll) singer, her distinctive soul vocals earned her the epithet “the Polish Janis Joplin”. Speaking to Polskie Radio, music journalist Norbert Borzym said she was sometimes called “the greatest soul voice in Poland”.
“She didn’t like being labelled as a ‘big beat’ artist,” Borzym told Polskie Radio. “She did not want to be forced into a singing style. Despite the fact that they tried to match it to the prevailing model in the country, it was closer to soul music.”
In 1978, Lewandowska released a single, a soul ballad called “Dotykiem chcę dziś poznać wszystko” – a record which is now a collector’s item.
She then moved to West Germany in the late 1970s, but intended to return to Poland in 1980 to continue recording music for what would have been her first album. However, instead she emigrated to the United States, adopting the name Renata Roberts.
There, she took up work as a visual artist and interior designer, abandoning her musical career completely, reports Glośniej.com.
Lewandowska had never mentioned her musical history to her family, with the news coming as a “huge surprise”, says Borzym told Polskie Radio.
“Our archive is full of treasures,” Borzym added. “It’s time to present them. It would be a pity if they were forgotten.”
Main image credit: Renata Lewandowska Official RLR/YouTube (screenshot)
Juliette Bretan is a freelance journalist covering Polish and Eastern European current affairs and culture. Her work has featured on the BBC World Service, and in CityMetric, The Independent, Ozy, New Eastern Europe and Culture.pl.
