“It is with deep regret we announce that on August 20 - after many years of struggling with an illness - my father Piotr Szczepanik passed away in his sleep,” Szczepanik’s daughter Jagoda told state news agency PAP.
From 1980 to 1989, Szczepanik was involved with Poland’s anti-communist Solidarity movement.
According to PAP, Szczepanik organized an independent, underground music scene when Poland’s strongman leader Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski imposed martial law on December 13, 1981 to stifle rising opposition.
Szczepanik is best known for performing songs such as Żółte Kalendarze (“Yellow calendars”), Kochać (“To love”), Goniąc kormorany (“Chasing cormorants”), and Nigdy więcej (“Never again”).
“I did not […] make any special effort in order to become popular. In fact, it was the people who decided that the songs I performed became hits,” he was quoted as saying by PAP in one of the interviews.
Piotr Szczepanik was born on February 14, 1942. He studied art history at the Catholic University of Lublin. He made his musical debut in the southern city of Kraków in 1963.
In the 1960s and 1970s, he co-hosted a stage and cabaret show entitled Popierajmy się (“Let's Support One Another”) together with Bohdan Łazuka and Jacek Fedorowicz.
Also in the 1970s, Piotr Szczepanik started performing on his own, with a guitar, often singing poetic lyrics. He performed in the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and many countries in Europe.
In 2008, Szczepanik was awarded the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta, one of the country’s highest state honours, for outstanding services to Polish culture.
(jh/pk)
Source: PAP