Zara is the debut album of Parus ethno-ambient project from Belarus. It combines pagan songs which are performed by ethnographer and folk singer Hanna Silivonchyk on various dialects of Belarusian language with mixture of synthesizers and field recordings, which were created in Belarusian national parks by electroacoustic music producer Anton Anishchanka.
The songs where collected during ethnographic expeditions in remote territories of the country in different periods of time by Belarusian ethnographers.
From the vast amount of authentic material these songs are not chosen by accident. Hanna Silivonchyk says, „I choose the songs that somehow feel like mine for all sorts of reasons, that I love to be in.“ They are at the same time about her and about many other people who lived before and continue to live and thus become close through something very intimate.
‘Soniejka’ is a summer harvest song from the Dnieper river region, which sings about the readiness to meet life in any of its manifestations, about acceptance and love. ‘Zara’ is a song from the same region, depicting the main Indo-European mythological story of the heavenly love between the Moon and the Evening Dawn and their parting. ‘Ružovyja ćviaty’ is a lyrical song from Dzvina river region, romantic and touching, which sings about the very beginning of love between two people. And ‘Oj łuhom idu’ is a spring song from the territory of today’s Poland, from Podlasie, which tells about the life of a married woman, about the fate that may befall her and how to go through it.
All of them are about one’s own feeling of the present time, one’s life, about personal life experience, but at the same time – about universal human contents and meanings that exist outside of time.
