Piter Gan

Since 1984, the main prize awarded by Radio Kielce to the best folk band at the Busko Folklore Meetings has borne the name of Piotr Gan.

Recordings made by Piotr Gan can still be heard today in the programmes *Play, Folk Band!*, *Radio Pigwa* and *In Folk Rhythms*, as well as on the *Play, Folk Band!* series of records released by Radio Kielce.

Leszek Ślusarski, Radio Kielce

Marek Różycki Jr. on himself:

I have been a journalist for nearly 40 years and am the nephew of Irena Gan; Piotr was my uncle. I accompanied him many times during his recording trips. Following Piotr’s death in 1983, I wrote a memoir about him, which was published in a Kielce daily newspaper. The text was consulted with Piotr’s wife, Irena.

Piotr’s achievements would not have been possible without his wife Irena Gan, who devoted her entire life to the idea of promoting folk culture as well.

I invite you to read it:

PIOTR GAN – Kolberg of the Kielce Region

PIOTR GAN (7 January 1914 – 6 April 1983) was born in Kamianets-Podilskyi, into the family of a district court judge who was soon transferred to Volodymyr. It was there that Piotr completed primary school, followed by secondary school in nearby Sarny. He completed his high school education in Vilnius and, one year before graduating, began studying singing at the Vilnius Conservatory of Music as a non-matriculated student.

After completing his studies and receiving his diploma, he was appointed forester by the State Forests Directorate in 1939. Under the conditions of the occupation, this position turned out to be almost providential. He remained there until 1943, when the Germans, rightly suspecting the forester of cooperation with the underground resistance, loaded the entire Gan family onto a transport carrying “forced labour” to Germany. Fortunately, they had some valuables, which they used to persuade the guards to let them “escape”.

As a result, they ended up in Starachowice, quite by chance. The end of the war found them there. In Starachowice, Piotr Gan also began working at the District Office, in the Department of Culture, first as a clerk and then as Head of the Department of Culture. A year later, he was promoted to Deputy Director of the Department of Culture of the Provincial Office, that is, the Presidium of the Provincial National Council in Kielce.

He was responsible for “promoting culture”, but working in a government office within the rigid framework of fixed working hours clearly restricted his creative temperament. He loved music. All kinds of music. He eventually turned to folk music. With great enthusiasm, he helped establish the Kielce Region Song and Dance Ensemble, continually organised folk band reviews and exhibitions of folk artists. He seemed to know every blacksmith, potter and folk sculptor, finding his way to them without fail, guided by some kind of sixth sense.

In the most cluttered village smithy, he could spot an absolutely beautiful and unique ornament, forged in metal both for decoration and as an intricate joint connecting the sections of an iron fence surrounding a church and adorning the Kielce landscape.

From the mid-1950s, he began publishing numerous articles and columns in the local newspaper *Słowo Ludu*, more specifically in its Saturday cultural supplement *Słowo Tygodnia*, edited by Irena Jaroszowa. He was still a state official at the time, which was quite exceptional in those days. His publications included reviews, biographies and studies of local folk artists. He illustrated his texts with unique photographs taken personally.

He established a collaboration with Polish Radio in Kielce, whose editor-in-chief after the political changes of October 1956 was Maria Olkuśnik, who was then enthusiastically developing the Kielce broadcasting station. The possibility of recording on magnetic tape the authentic sounds and voices of songs preserved in the memories of folk musicians completely captivated Piotr. Thus, without regret, he left his “position” and, in the early 1960s, moved permanently into radio work.

A company outside-broadcast vehicle, a “Phenomen” inherited from the Warsaw station, with Bogdan Orzechowski at the wheel and recording engineer Ryszard Makowski at the mixing desk, transported Piotr Gan’s team at least once a week across the Kielce Voivodeship, which was much more extensive than it is today. They made successive recordings for a series of programmes that were enormously popular with listeners, including *Musical Bonus of the Week*, *From the Sound Archive of Our Folklore* and *Listeners’ Requests*.

Demand was so great – thousands of letters from listeners – that it soon exceeded supply. Piotr Gan called on radio journalist Czesław Kussal for help. Kussal, in turn, encouraged by the national Polish Radio network in Warsaw, began sending the material to the national broadcast. It was difficult to keep up with everything in this “marketplace beneath the rooster”.

It was then that Piotr Gan was awarded the Distinguished Cultural Activist Badge for the first time, as well as the Oskar Kolberg Award on four occasions for his contribution to folk culture. It is also worth mentioning that Piotr Gan gave lectures for the Society for Relations with the Polish Diaspora for many years.

Around that time, the Gans – his wife Irena was director of the Kielce “Estrada”, where she worked for nearly 45 years, an exceptional achievement on a national scale – bought themselves a Syrena, which they called “Kwiatuszka”, later replacing it with a Wartburg. Under Mrs Irena’s heavy foot, these cars travelled the length and breadth of the Kielce Region. The outside-broadcast vehicle now travelled only to collect the finished recordings. The superb “Kudelski” tape recorder appeared much later.

It is remarkable that Mr Gan still had the strength and time to write. Yet he wrote more and more for newspapers, cultural weeklies and the folk press, and eventually published his own works, readily sponsored by the Department and Ministry of Culture. They received excellent reviews, including from Professor Roman Reinfuss. Piotr Gan was never afraid of hard work; when he decided he wanted a museum of folk musical instruments, he simply got on with it – “Go ahead and do it, my friend.”

He became a consultant responsible for acquiring exhibits. There was no room for mistakes here: one could not simply buy something straight from a music shop. Piotr Gan did not make such mistakes. The instruments can be seen at the Museum in Szydłowiec Castle, along the E-7 route. They are also held in numerous other museums, including the Central Ethnographic Museum in Warsaw.

Meanwhile, more than three thousand unique recordings are waiting in the Radio Kielce archives for someone to rediscover them – for a new Piotr, an ethnographer, musicologist and cultural scholar. I witnessed many of these recordings being made myself...

Perhaps someone will also become part of our collective memory, just as Piotr Gan did, through the Folklore Festival named after him, which each year revives our memory of him. Not only in Busko-Zdrój, but throughout Poland.