Czesław Niemen - Katharsis

Czesław Niemen (real name Czesław Juliusz Wydrzycki) (February 16, 1939 - January 17, 2004) was one of the most important and original Polish singer-songwriters and rock balladeers of the last quarter-century,[1] singing mainly in the Polish language. He is arguably the most acclaimed Polish singer of all time.[weasel words] Niemen was born in Stare Wasiliszki in Grodno Province. After the World War II it became a part of Byelorussian SSR and in the 1950s he was allowed to move to Poland. He made his debut in the early 1960s, singing Polish rock and soul music. He possessed an unusually wide voice range and equally rich intonation. He was also an ardent composer and a keyboard player. Soon after his first successful concerts in France, he started to use the pseudonym Niemen instead of his real name, gaining wider notoriety in Poland and making it easier to pronounce by foreigners (Niemen is a Polish pronunciation of the Neman River and this way he wanted to mark his birth country).