Step into the world of forgotten fiddles.
One of the most misunderstood figures in ancient mythology, Medusa was wrongfully punished and cast out for being the victim of a violent act, but is remembered solely for her frightful ugliness and lithifying gaze.
Through their personal narratives of alienation due to racism, sexism, immigration, queerness, and disability, Medusa the band aims to retell this story by bringing back what has been cast out.
Marta Solek and Saskia Tomkins resurrect the Suka, the Płosk fidel, and the Nyckelharpa - near-forgotten traditional folk fiddles with disreputable connotations that were rejected for centuries in their home countries of Poland and Sweden.
![](http://d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/s:bzglfiles/u/717186/30527ece071cc0cf7235674c03df5916fe27aa02/original/medusa-2021-0160-2-1.jpg/!!/b%3AW1siZXh0cmFjdCIseyJsZWZ0IjoyOTYsInRvcCI6MjcxMywid2lkdGgiOjI0MTEsImhlaWdodCI6MjQxMX1dLFsicmVzaXplIiw1MDBdLFsibWF4Il0sWyJ3ZSJdXQ%3D%3D/meta%3AeyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ%3D%3D.jpg)
Who's that babe with the black hair?
Resting Suka Face
Medusa featuring Marta on the Greek lyra, one of the more common knee-fiddles. This instrument features sympathetic resonant strings, like the nyckelharpa (see below).
Knee-fiddles:
Marta Solek wields the power of her ancestors' voices through the use of instruments resurrected from the wells of time.
But what is a knee-fiddle?
“Knee-fiddles” i.e., bowed chordophones played in the vertical position, are an extinct group of musical instruments existing in the past in Polish territory, known only from a few iconographic sources from the 17th and 19th century. Their peculiarity lies in the technique of shortening the strings – with the fingernails, and not with the fingertips.
Knee-fiddles and the fingernail technique link Polish folk instruments with other cultures. Considering the fact that the discussed instruments were held vertically during a performance, their closest counterpart in other countries was the Russian gudok, an instrument whose existence is confirmed for the period from the 17th century until the 19th century when it disappeared.
Geographically more remote equivalents can be found in the Balkans, where numerous types of pear-shaped bowed chordophones exist and are referred to with an umbrella term “the Balkan bowed lyre.” This family of instruments includes, among others, the Bulgarian gadułka, the Greek lyra and the Dalmatian/Croatian lijerica. During a performance, they are held vertically and the strings are stopped laterally with the fingernails.
Thirty years ago Polish knee-fiddles were known to a few ethnomusicologists in Poland and a few abroad, and two Polish museums of musical instruments exhibited misinterpreted copies of instruments from iconographic sources. In the mid-1990s correct versions were built first for museums, then for artists who recreated playing technique "
The following is an excerpt from “Knee-Fiddles in Poland: Multidimensional Bridging of Paradigms”
Suka from Bilgoraj
The "Suka" was a unique fiddle that was played vertically, on the knee or hanging from a strap, and the strings were stopped at the side with the fingernails; similar to the Gadulka.The body of the instrument was very similar to the modern violin but the neck was very wide, and the pegbox was crude. This was thought to be the "missing link" between the upside-down or "knee chordophone " instruments, and the modern violin. It died out, and was known only from drawings of a single specimen displayed at an exhibition in 1888.
Plock fidel
It probably comes from the 16th century. The original instrument was excavated in 1985 during archaeological research in the Old Town of Płock. Currently, this copy is in the Masovian Museum in Płock.
Made of one piece of wood, usually birch or alder. The number of strings as well as their tuning remains undecided.