For full bio see Czesław Niemen.


Niemen is the name of several bands led by Czesław Juliusz Wydrzycki - artist name Niemen (February 16th, 1939 - January 17th, 2004) one of the most prominent Polish musicians of the 20th century.

Niemen himself was born in Wasiliszki, polish prewar Grodno district - actually soviet Belarus. Niemen's birthday preceeded the soviet invasion on Poland by exactly 7 months and his artist name is taken from the river flowing through his, since lost and occupied, homeland. He was a singer with a wide voice scale and rich intonation, a composer, a keyboard player, a poet, a painter and a sound designer/engineer. Niemen debuted in the early 1960s, singing a Polish kind of chanson, rock & roll and later soul music. His 1967 hit "Dziwny jest ten świat" ("Strange Is This World") became the most important Polish protest song of that era.

The first three records Niemen recorded with his band "Akwarele" ("The Watercolours").

Niemens next band "Enigmatic" pointed towards a more progressive direction and recorded the groundbreaking hit "Bema pamięci żałobny rapsod" ("Mourner's Rhapsody") in 1969.



Just Niemen sometimes called Grupa Niemen was the name of Czesław's next and most promising band consisting of the young Silesian progressive trio SBB (as seen on the photo above) and polish jazz musicians Helmut Nadolski and Andrzej Przybielski.
This band performed Europawide between 1971 and 1973 recording at least 5 albums. The bands name SBB, accidentally a provocation itself, reminded on SB - the hated polish-soviet secret security service Służba Bezpieczeństwa. Against all odds, already in 1972 the musicians performed behind the "Iron Curtain" at the Jazz & Rock Now! opening show for the Olympic Games in Munich, Germany, where they played next to John McLaughlin's Mahavishnu Orchestra and Charles Mingus and subsequently toured with Jack Bruce.

After SBB split from Niemen CBS released Niemen's solo album "Russische Lieder'" consisting of Russian traditional and folk songs and hired Mahavishnu Orchestra less John McLaughlin replaced by John Abercrombie for an extended remake of "Mourner's Rhapsody" which eventually became a commercial flop.



The following Niemen band was called "Aerolit" playing fusion and reording at least 2 albums (1974-1975).

In 1975 Czeław Niemen started his solo career recording electronic music ("Katharsis"), making theatre music and film soundtracks.

After the "martial law" Czesław moved to expressing himself in painting and computer graphics. On January 17th 2004 Czesław Niemen died of cancer in Warsaw. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.