A man trained to design buildings spent his life constructing songs instead, and the foundation was laid with a French phrase meaning 'forward.' On 9 October 2006, the Polish singer and composer Marek Grechuta died in Kraków at the age of 60. Twenty years on, his music still feels less like a career than a quiet act of architecture: precise, emotional, and built to last.
From architecture to Anawa
Grechuta studied architecture at the Tadeusz Kościuszko Polytechnic in Kraków and worked as an architect by profession. But in 1966 he co-founded a cabaret called Anawa with the composer Jan Kanty Pawluśkiewicz. The name came from the French 'en avant' — 'forward.' That name turned out to be a promise. A year later, at a student song festival in Kraków, Grechuta made his public debut with 'Tango Anawa' and took second place among vocalists.
The breakthrough came fast. In 1969, at the National Festival of Polish Song in Opole, Grechuta won the main prize for the song 'Wedding.' Two years later he left Anawa and formed a new group, WIEM — an acronym for 'In Another Musical Epoch.' The name was a statement of intent. With Anawa he had recorded two albums, 'Marek Grechuta & Anawa' and 'Korowód,' and the title track of the second won him another main prize at Opole that same year.
Paintings, poems and collaborators
What made Grechuta different was his range of collaborators and subjects. He began working with the Kraków cabaret club Piwnica pod Baranami in 1976, a partnership that lasted almost a decade. In 1981 he released 'Śpiewające obrazy' — 'Singing Pictures' — an album inspired by paintings by Van Gogh, Picasso, Degas, Monet, Renoir, and Wyspiański. With the actress Krystyna Janda he recorded 'W malinowym chruśniaku,' setting poems by Bolesław Leśmian to music. His song 'Dni, których nie znamy' became an unofficial anthem for the football club Korona Kielce.
But the same sensitivity that made his music feel so intimate also made his life unstable. Grechuta suffered from bipolar disorder for many years. It sometimes forced him to interrupt rehearsals and concerts, and audiences mistakenly assumed he was drunk. The illness had shadowed him since his youth, and it made every public appearance a small act of courage.
The illness had shadowed him since his youth, and it made every public appearance a small act of courage.
The music industry finally recognised that courage. In 2001 Grechuta received the Golden Fryderyk award from the Polish phonographic industry for his artistic achievements. By then he had already spent decades refusing to chase trends. Instead of pop gloss, he offered songs about values, about paintings, about the fragile line between sanity and imagination.
His funeral in Kraków was a farewell from the people who knew him best. Before the burial, a mass was held at St. Mary's Basilica, where artists from Piwnica pod Baranami sang 'Przychodzimy, odchodzimy' and 'Dezyderata.' From the gates of Rakowicki Cemetery, his friends from the club carried the coffin — among them Grzegorz Turnau, Jan Kanty Pawluśkiewicz, and Zbigniew Preisner. An architect's son, he had designed something more lasting than any building: a way of singing that made Polish poetry feel like common property.