NAKED CITY – THE CHRONICLES OF NADYA
Image: Nadya at Forge
Singers and musicians come from all different backgrounds, some of them quite mundane by today’s standards – others from environments that would stifle any burgeoning artistic ambition. In the case of Sydney singer Nadya Golski, her upbringing was not only extraordinary but paved a most unusual path to her current status as one of this city’s most exceptional vocalists.
This remarkable journey began with Nadya growing up in the suburbs of Canberra. She remembers that she had always sung and used to make up songs when she was very young, sometimes looking in the mirror and crying, imagining that she was the dramatic lead in a Hollywood movie. However what was an innocent, creative and joyful childhood took both a tragic and fortuitous turn when Nadya was sill very young.
“I was nearly 11, when my father was killed riding his bike in Canberra. My mother remarried a Polish explorer, who for his anthropological fieldwork chose to relocate his new family (us and my new born little brother), to a remote village in the Western Highlands of Papua New Guinea, where the tribespeople had enjoyed very little contact with white people.”
Nadya recalls that originally she did not want to move to PNG and opted to stay instead at boarding school, but when she went there, soon fell in love with the place and its people.
“I found being there took me so far away from our lives in Canberra, the loss of our father and brought us into the new life in a really amazing way, where everything was new and interesting, even our new father.”
Living in a remote village, Nadya soon learned to speak Pidgin English, a language in which she would later record and regularly perform, even scoring a number one hit across the PNG airwaves. After a number of years in the wilds of the Western Highlands she returned to finish high school in Australia, after which she moved to Lublin in Poland, singing with an avant-garde theatre company.
During both her childhood and later years Nadya has always maintained an enormous affection for Gypsy music and the culture of the Balkans.
“My parents were very into Gypsy music, and had old records, and I loved the Gypsies in the stories that were read to me, and found the idea of them, their freedom, the life style that was portrayed in poems and stories and their music, and felt somehow that I needed to be there with them dancing around the fire singing.”
The current manifestation of these years of delving into the Gypsy tradition is the ‘101 Candles Orkestra’, a collaboration between Nadya and the dynamic Zoran Todorovic, a stunning virtuoso on the accordion. Together with an all star group of Sydney based musicians they have established themselves as one of the world’s leading purveyors of the genre loosely termed ‘Gypsy Jazz” – but one that incorporates many different styles from French Chanson, through Balkan rhythms to Russian and Polish influences. The group has toured extensively in and around Europe and across Australia with standout festival appearances at Montreux, Edinburgh, Womadelaide, Cziget and, Woodford.
When Nadya and Zoran and the 101 Candles Orkestra play it’s a real event and opportunity for both the musicians and the audience to unleash their passion, both on stage and on the dancefloor. There is so much more to Nadya’s incredible story, with film rights to a bio pic already optioned and an autobiography imminent. Capture just a part of this amazing musical odyssey when Nadya & Zoran’s 101 Candles Orkestra play the Camelot Lounge in Marrickville on Saturday.
Nadya, Zoran & The 101 Candle Orkestra – Nov 19; 7.30pm doors, 9pm show. Camelot Lounge, 19 Marrickville Rd, Marrickville. $25-$30. Tickets & info: www.camelotlounge.com
