POP MUSIC REVIEW : EWA DEMARCZYK’S SONGS OF PASSION

Anyone who has ever had the temerity to tell a Polish joke should be obliged to spend an evening listening to the songs of Ewa Demarczyk--the “dark angel” of Polish song.

Virtually unknown in this country, she turned her Los Angeles debut Saturday night at the Variety Arts Center into a triumphant rebuttal to the insulting image of Poles as a nationality of incompetents.

Demarczyk’s program made no easy concessions to its audience. Except for a number in French and another in Spanish, everything was in her native tongue. While a few folk song references might have sounded vaguely familiar, virtually none of the material has ever been heard in this country except on import recordings.

But none of this mattered. Dressed in a long black gown whose only decoration was a simple gold cross, and with shoulder-length hair and black bangs that gave her the look of an intense Jeanne Moreau, Demarczyk offered a performance whose fiery passion transcended language, style and nationality.

Most of her presentation had a dark, mysterious quality, with the stark, black-and-white lighting and the shadowy presence of her musicians heightening the sense of drama.

The music was startlingly wide-ranging--from near- avant-garde mixtures of song and declamatory poetry to violin-drenched Gypsy rhythms and choral anthems, all done with the help of eight remarkable musician/singers.

Demarczyk sang about tender love and tragic loss with the roller-coaster intensity of a young Piaf. But her deepest passions were reserved for songs that described the courageous survival of the individual. And it is her firm devotion to such material, one suspects, that has made her--understandably--a much-loved star in her native land.