Masha Natanson

Masha Natanson comes from a family with a multigenerational musical tradition. She inherited her strong passion for traditional music from her mother, who always sang Gypsy and Russian songs at home. Still, Masha chose her own path of musical development. At the age of 15, she left music school and her parents' home, moving to the highlands in her search for genuine traditional music of the Carpathians and Gypsy communities. Playing in local folk groups, she learned hundreds of melodies and songs in dozens of languages and dialects that could be found in this multicultural area. She lived in various places, earning a living by playing music. For almost a year, she also lived and traveled with Gypsy musicians from the Kałe Kała band until the moment when, in 2004, she started her adventure with Lublin-based world-music artists, which led to the creation of her own band - Čači Vorba, two years later.

Apart from adapting a huge repertoire of traditional songs, from Russian romances to Greek rebetiko, Masha is also an author of lyrics in the Romani language. They tell about love, searching for lost roots, about constant wandering, the cycle of birth and death, and the position of women in traditional societies. Her strong, charismatic voice and emotional interpretations have been strongly appreciated by world-music lovers from all around the world, and her strong devotion to the music draws an image of an extraordinary East-European artist.

Masha cooperates with many bands (Kałe Bała, Village Kollektiv, Transkapela, Romani Bacht, Burdon, St. Nicolas Orchestra, Tomek Nowak Nu Collective) and artists (Rafał Rozmus, Boris Somerschaf, Karo Mkrtchyan, Kuba Niedoborek, Jahiar Azim Irani, Thanos Gountanos, Loukas Metaxas, Bajsa Arifovska, Bart Pałyga, Stanislaw Marinczenko, Mitya Gerasimov, and others). In ten years of her stage activity, Masha has recorded seven CD albums and played over 300 concerts in 15 countries. She also runs workshops on Carpathian and Gypsy music.

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"She sings almost casually, simply, with an extraordinary voice, an incredibly clear one, charismatic, movingly, naturally, and sincerely. There are no weak points in her vocal. I suspect she has made a deal with the devil." Wojtek Nowak, edinburgh.com.pl, Poland/UK (concert review)

"Not even someone in Romania interpreted so intimately, convincingly, and passionately the old Lautar songs from the suburban pubs and folk songs from the rich heritage of Wallachia." Grit Friedrich, MDR Figaro, Germany (CD "Tajno Biav" review)

"After the concert, Ela Rojek, an eminent Polish alternative actress, remarked to me, 'She's the worst example for any aspiring musician. She quit school and ran off into the mountains to live with the Gypsies...' Ela then laughed, saying, 'And she's the best vocalist in Poland.' I was happy to hear this: it made me feel a little less crazy. It somewhat explained my strange urge, during the concert, to find a way to crawl inside her voice and stay there forever." Lauren Lim, Matador Travel Magazine (True Speech: The Music of Čači Vorba)

"A singer who switches effortlessly to the repertoire of Romanian and Bulgarian songs with the vibrating vocal embellishments that she really sings very nicely. She has a bright, agile voice, which she delights the melodies with (...) Maria Natanson is not only a singer but also a meritorious violinist as they smoothly change their playing from Romanian to Bulgarian characteristics (...) The Bulgarian parts are quieter and deeper in nature and with much feeling put on Natanson's kemence, a spike fiddle that is played upright and sounds like the Cretan lyre or the Bulgarian gadulka." Mattie Poels, Radio 6, Holland (CD "Tajno Biav" review)

"Natanson’s warm, focused voice, her natural ease in singing in many languages, and the transparent, varied musical arrangements are what make this music so unique." Till Shuman, Oriente Musik (CD "Šatrika" review)