Urszula Dudziak, Polish jazz personality who made her home in New York since the 70’s returned recently to Poland. She is one of the best Polish jazz vocalists with a fantastic five-octave voice range  and a very international career singing along Jeanne Lee, Bobby McFerrin, Norma Winstone, Sting, Michele Hendricks, Lauren Newton and others.  Dudziak sings scat. The jazz technique she attributes to Ella Fitzgerald.  

Last Saturday, the singer entertained Krakow’s audience  --during the Jazz Night, a part of a month-long  Summer Jazz Festival in Krakow. The night was magical and the Little Market Square of Krakow packed.

Her distinct style, I love, also makes me wonder about the wordless way of artistic expression: powerful, engaging and unique. Even though the Jazz Night in Krakow showed Dudziak also as an accomplished storyteller, who just released an autobiography : I Will Sing It All Out.

“Good thoughts,”said Dudziak.

 “I’m sixty-nine, and still leaping on stage because I harbor good thoughts right here, right here in the pituaitary gland.”

 “Good thoughts bring about good will and good deeds, and good life.” Dudziak went on.

Despite the good energy she spread with the instrumentalization of her voice, she also shared a story of the police interrupting her vocal practice in the Warsaw apartment one night past 10 p.m. after a phone call from neighbors.

“They asked me to pay  a 500 zl fine,” she said. “And I was willing to fight that because this is my livelihood, how can I not practice what I do?”

Apparently, some neighbors did not get good vibration from Dudziak’s  high-pitch tune that touches the roof of the head and releases  serotonin, the very hormone of happy thoughts she had lauded a moment earlier.

The scat singing may be a panaceum  in lieu of wellbutrim and prosac. But most importantly they should teach the technique to politicians and all those who might benefit directly from wordless expression. After all, the noise level in all the media doesn’t quarantee that someone has something to say. Scat may be a solution to an alternative of self-serving loud words of choice. And that seems to be universal.