Before the album was released, you released the single Body. His text discusses the amazing abilities of your body. Is it a song with a message?
For a long time now, I’ve felt the need to communicate something in my pop songs. But it was a challenge to figure out how to do it with care so that it didn’t sound moralizing. At the same time, I didn’t want to do so-called funny songs. Specifically, I wrote The Body in the context of motherhood, but people could understand it in other contexts. We also opened the door to this by the fact that girls with various physical limitations appeared in the video, whether they were the reason for motherhood, surgery or life itself.
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In response, I received a lot of news from the Czech Republic and Poland, where the song was also released. After a long time, it happens to me that people on the street sometimes come to me not only holding their thumbs up, but that the song appealed to them. These specific compliments are a huge satisfaction for me.
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I have a feeling that if the song has already touched someone, then considerably. I didn’t claim feedback because I might be disappointed. But the reactions are numerous and pleasant.
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You released your new album Umami seven years after the previous work Leporelo and you come up with a different music on it. How did it develop?
I’ve been groping for a long time. In addition, I felt a certain pressure because it would be my first record, which I would produce and release myself, and the longer the time has passed since last time, the more I was afraid that high demands would be placed on it.
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I tried to find out exactly what the adult Ewa was, what she would sing about, how she would move in the music. I may have created the pressure myself for the most part, but it led me to gradually begin to perceive that I had clearer themes of lyrics and a view of music in my head.
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I also calmed down more and gained more balance after the birth of my son Arthur. When I defined how I wanted to pass on my music to people, it was time to start working. In the meantime, I’ve been releasing new songs and I think my development is captured in them. But those who put the last record Leporelo and the new Umami next to each other will probably be quite surprised.
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In the album booklet, you write that over the last seven years, you have heard from the music industry what you should do. But one of the producers of the new album Jenda Vávra had no specific ideas and let you create and sing. Did it make it easier for you?
It was not very pleasant to listen to the frequent opinions of other people who clearly knew what I should do in music. I myself was not at all sure where to go, and it makes me nervous when someone else has a clearer vision of me than I do. It blocked me a bit, because there were producers or musicians among them that I respect. I realized that it was nice to hear honest and well-thought-out advice, but I became more and more convinced that the final form must unconditionally match my vision.
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Jenda Vávra behaved differently. He didn’t push me anywhere, on the contrary, he just encouraged me to be bolder in my authenticity, not to pinpoint the style in which I make the record or where it has a chance to sound. And let me just think about whether I enjoy it, it captures and I don’t skip listening to any songs.
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We met regularly, came up with musical ideas, and he mined my feelings out of me. He also helped me contact other album producers because several of them were involved.
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Ewa Farna
Photo: archive of the singer
Why did you decide to work with more producers?
Nowadays, it’s common and I think it’s also beneficial for me. There was quarantine, we worked online, everyone was active. For each song, I was part of the creative team. Some were created at songwriting camps, in collaboration with other authors.
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We didn’t work on them there from scratch, which would not be very conceptual, given that I was recording the album. Jenda and I had prepared topics prepared in the first phase. I knew what I wanted the song to be about and how it was supposed to be in the mood. So there was a lot to build on with the camp’s songwriting camp.
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David Stypka also helped me a lot. When I was first pregnant, I told him I would like to release an album before giving birth. I asked him to help me. He came to my house for three days and we had to write some lyrics. But it didn’t matter at all and I was pretty unhappy.
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But David reassured me and told me that we had done the most important thing. And he was right. Thanks to the long debates together, after his departure, I knew who I wanted to say with the new songs and how I wanted to do it. He told me that keeping this in order is the most difficult creative process.
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The album also has an author’s track from Poland. Do you have your own background in a country where you are very popular?
A year ago, the producer Mikolaj Trybulec composed the song Lost in Translation with us at the Czech songwriting camp. It was only released on a new record and he became the second most listened-to producer on Spotify in Poland. It is very popular there now. I would like to work with him in the future, because I like his work.
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But I don’t have a permanent author team in Poland, I rather surrounded myself with individual people. Maybe because of the lyrics, because the Umami album has its Polish equivalent. It will be released there in January.
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The Czech singer Sofian Medjmedj is a guest in the song Reincarnation. How did you connect?
It’s the oldest song on the album. It was heard for the first time at my performance at the Karlín Forum in Prague at the age of ten, which was in 2016. But we remade it for the new record, we wanted it to be fresher. And we added a guest.
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It already seemed that we would record the song without that second look, which also played an important role in the meaning of the song. But then I remembered Sofian. I knew him from Lukáš Chromek, my guitarist. She works with him as a producer. It was I who came to him and asked him to cooperate. The very next day he recorded a part in the studio, which is on the record. We were all excited about him. He put into it exactly what I was missing in the song.
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Why is the whole album called Umami, but the song is called Umami?
The record begins with an intro called Umami and ends with a song in the title of which we wrote a hard y at the end. We did it because a lot of people hear Czech turnover in the name of their mother.
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Umami is a Japanese word, meaning the fifth taste that highlights everyone else. It cannot be described unambiguously, but thanks to it, the food tastes completely. And the umami of my life is motherhood. When we first encounter the taste of umami, it is while drinking breast milk.
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The word has a lot of interrelated meanings for me. All the more so when, in general, umami can be anything that makes one’s life more complex and enhances all one’s tastes.
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Your husband Martin Chobot recently announced that he will leave your backing band. Will you replace him?
We won’t. He was with me in the band for twelve years, he even sang some songs with me, I wouldn’t want to replace him with anyone. We agreed with the rest of the band that we wouldn’t need two guitars to play songs from the new album live.
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They are not essentially pure rock, we will approach them at the same time. In the same way, we will transform the arrangements of older songs, looking for a new sound for the live performance. So rather, we were able to approach the older repertoire again and again, which doesn’t really have to be wrong at all.
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