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Olenka’s music has a sound that grabs you like a catchy soundtrack to an ornery film…
“That sounds good, what is that?”
Oh no! It could be just one of those brilliant but all too brief snippets of music that chooses not to follow the corporate radio promotion machine! These kinds of dangerously fresh sounds appear today only in daring commercials, Public Radio news segues, film, or satellite radio. How are you ever going to find it again?
...but the song plays on, unfolding petal by petal as unique instruments enter the phat, world fusion mix, and the driving grooves tug at your hips…
By the time you’ve gotten to the second chorus of one of Olenka’s songs, you’re singing it. The outrageous meters of “Tumbleweed”(7/8) and “Different Drum” (13/16) create rhythmic patterns that are unheard of in pop music, and yet the sounds are fully orchestrated and undeniably pop-friendly. (How the rhythms came about: The Story)
Meanwhile, the spiraling melodies carry lyrics that build image upon image, interlacing thoughts and social commentary with tinges of metaphysics and subtle spirituality. Taboo for corporate radio -- but nourishing to your soul and intellect.
Although the first hearing of Olenka’s music is light and catchy, there is intelligence here. She actually got a grant from the Iowa Arts Council for her project World Rhythms in Original Music to make this recording – a grant that competed with organizations like the Des Moines Opera Company and the Cedar Falls Symphony Orchestra. Hers was by far the largest individual artist grant in that season.
So forget the radio, as you have probably forgotten it already. Why surrender your ears and your mind to the formulaic and insipid Top 40 that record companies and promoters are virtually buying time from radio stations to play as though the songs were commercials, advertising little more than the demise of a culture.
It’s your world: you choose how to fill it… and in this age of the independent artist, you have come to the right place.