Goat & Cuba More

Five years, three albums and one of the most unobvious duets on the Polish music scene. Koza & Kuba Więcek set out for the first time on a tour summarizing all the achievements so far. In Wrocław you will hear them in a version that has never been seen before — with a full band and new arrangements. Grab your tickets and see for yourself.

The duo's latest album was released in May and best shows which side the artists are heading. It is still a meeting of contemporary jazz with experimental hip-hop production, but sampling is treated here less as a technique and more as a separate language. The whole thing is spun by the perspective of someone who looks at everything from a distance — the poetic, in some places almost metaphysical rap of the goat collides with the raw, street flow and leaves the impression as if reality has moved a step away for a moment.

There are a lot of live, acoustic instruments and freestyle, as if the duo wanted to record a new standard before anyone could call it that, and the lo-fi texture doesn't so much dirty the sound as it deepens the nostalgia inscribed in the lyrics. The band, which has performed at festivals such as Open'er or Tauron Nowa Muzyka, adds a lot of nods to the classics of cinema, literature and music.

The story begins in Berlin. Kuba Więcek, then a recognizable jazz musician, was looking for sounds far from what he had played so far. Koza (Kamil Białaszek), a rapper, poet and playwright from Raszyn, was looking for exactly the same thing, only on the other side of the stage. What connected me with Koza was that each of us wanted to escape from our species — Więcek said in an interview for the Four on the occasion of the premiere of “Heaven over Berlin” in 2021. The title of the album refers to a Wim Wenders film, but the most important thing is what is behind it: the city where both artists tried adult life, and music that was formed at a pace that neither of them had known before.

Five years have passed since the debut and two more albums. Including the latest “Man called Silence”, which Bartek Chaciński in “Polityka” placed among the best Polish albums of the beginning of the year. The critic praised, above all, how much Koza has matured as a narrator (Now I practice moderation - declares the rapper himself in one of the songs). He compared Więcka's beats to those we hear with Hoshia, assessing that they beat the productions that the biggest stars of Polish rap received in their careers.

By the way, he has Fryderyk, the “Polityka” Passport, The Glory of Onet and a place on the list of American “Downbeat” among the musicians who can define the sound of jazz in the coming years. Two years ago he also took the artistic helm of the WroSound festival, bringing artists such as Son Lux, Kokoroko, Alice Phoebe Lou and YĪN YĪN to Wrocław. Goat, in turn, develops in parallel as a playwright. His rap adaptation of “Pana Tadeusz” with Krzysztof Garbaczewski was one of the loudest theatrical premieres of recent seasons.

This is the duo's first tour to bring together tracks from all three albums in brand new live-band arrangements. On stage we will hear a full line-up capable of translating studio experiments into an unpredictable concert.

Performances are based on a direct relationship with the audience. The combination of hip-hop cypher with jazz improvisation makes each concert unique, and the audience is drawn into it no less than the musicians on stage.

If you are looking for a concert in Wroclaw that connects two seemingly distant worlds, this is your moment. Rap who is not afraid of silence. Jazz, who is not afraid of the street. Koza & Kuba Więcek — a summary of their journey in one evening. Come on, the stage will do the rest.