Krysia Kocjan

Hi, I'm Krysia's husband, Rob. On another blog here called Time Has Told Me, there have been a number of very kind and thoughtful posts over the past several months relating to Krysia's life, her music and the fact that she died this past February. She was only 53 years old when she passed. Over the past couple of days, I've been trying to post to Time Has Told Me unsuccessfully, so I thought I would start this blog about Krysia and her music here.

Krysia was variously a folk singer, a singer songwriter, and something of a rocker who had an absolutely amazing voice. She grew up in Scotland outside of Glasgow and was one of the original founding members of the Natural Acoustic Band. She also put out one eponymously titled solo album in the early 70s and did a lot of recording and touring with Al Stewart. In her musical career, she was variously known as Krysia Kocjan and Krysia Kristianne, and her married name was Krysia Kocjan-Haber. I have seen posts and searches under all of these three names.

She was a strong and beautiful spirit, and her music and lyrics were often infused with a sense of the mystical. This mystical sensibility was always beautifully counterbalanced by her sense of humor and mischief. She had a sense of what is sacred in life and a deep fascination with what lies underneath things, but she never fell into the trap that a lot of people can fall into of taking herself too seriously. Combined with her intelligence, her charm, her beauty, and her amazing singing voice and musical talent, she was really quite something in my opinion.

I'm just doing a quick post today to get the ball rolling. I wanted to let people know that I have been going through her music over the past few months, and I would like to make some of it available to those of you who have been looking for it. Her solo album from the early 70s has long been out of print, and due to a number of health problems, Krysia never recorded or performed as much as her talent warranted.

I would eventually like to do a small website related to her life and music and also a compilation CD. I'd like to sell the CD for whatever the fair price for a CD is these days -- $15 or $20 -- and put all the proceeds towards one of the causes that Krysia supported while she was alive. She had a lifelong interest in Tibetan Buddhism among other things, and she always donated whatever she could to helping Tibetan refugees, Tibetan nuns, etc. I think Krysia would really like that her music was somehow still going out into the world and having a positive effect like that.

The number of people who are looking for Krysia's music is small, so such a venture probably wouldn't raise a ton of money, but that's okay too, I guess. I'd also really just like to put her music out there. She was damn good in my opinion, and her music and voice deserve to be heard.

So... if anyone has any ideas about where/how I could post a couple of MP3 files for people, that would be a good start. I have some MP3 versions of songs from the Krysia album, which I would like to make available for free to whoever is interested. My stepbrother found a copy of the LP on the internet. He played it on a turntable and digitized the output. In other words, you will hear a lot of the pops, etc. from the record on these versions, but Krysia's voice shines through.

I know some of you would really like to have some of her music, and I don't see why that shouldn't be made available to people.

So write with suggestions please. I'll try to post some photos on this blogsite soon.

Thanks,

Rob