Lithuanian Folk Song Quartet

About the Lithuanian Folk Song Quartet

The foundation of the Lithuanian Folk Song Quartet is the traditional music of Bronius Krokys, a Lithuanian immigrant born in 1918. Like many traditional singers, Bronius Krokys grew up in a musical family. Both his parents were singers, as were his five brothers and sisters. His father sang the Latin vespers in church and all the children were in the choir. He recalls one day when he was very young and his godfather came to visit. He asked the young Krokys to sing a song. It was his "first solo." His godfather rewarded his efforts by giving him two small coins. That event left an important impression on Krokys who has continued to sing with dedication.

In 1949, Krokys emigrated to America where he took a job as a chemical engineer with the Eastman Kodak Company in Rochester, New York. He carried with him the memory of hundreds of traditional songs he had learned as a youth. These were songs he had been forbidden to sing after the annexation of the Baltic Republic of Lithuania to the Soviet Union in 1940. The "Land of Song" had been silenced.

The songs in Krokys's repertoire reflect the varied experiences of a generation of Lithuanians who saw the transition of their country from a traditional agrarian economy to a modernized independent nation. That same generation lived through the trauma of both German and Russian occupations, and some fled as refugees, eventually settling in America. His repertoire contains traditional folk songs once accompanying agricultural work, calendrical holidays and family feasts; children's songs; working songs; soldier's songs; and drinking songs. His favorites seem to be the courtship and wedding songs which are filled with symbolism and images of the Lithuanian landscape. A woman is always represented as a linden tree and a man as a birch. Sometimes the branches are bowed, sometimes broken, and sometimes entwined.

The Lithuanian Folk Song Quartet includes Joseph Kasinskas on guitar, Bridget Kasinskas on violin and Rasa Krokys singing along with her father. A second1generation Lithuanian American, Joseph Kasinskas is a composer and music teacher who has been working with Krokys to record and transcribe the more than two hundred traditional Lithuanian folk songs in Krokys's memory. They have paid particular attention to harmonies, recreating those harmonies Krokys learned from his mother and grandfather. Their plan is to publish a collection of these songs to make available to Lithuanian American communities throughout the country.