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Poland–Polka

In class we dance the polka, and why not? While the polka actually originated in the Czech land of Bohemia and became popular when Viennese composers wrote polkas in the 19th century, the Poles adopted the dance and made it the centerpiece of many popular cultural celebrations. When Poles emigrated they may have left the 3/4 time mazurka behind but they brought the 2/4 time polka with them.

Today you can find a place to Polka in most large cities around the Western world, and not just in traditional Polish beer halls. Polka music is both contagious and ever-adaptable; check out this comprehensive modern polka CD review site to see what’s new in polka. There are even many kinds of Polka in the U.S.: Polish-American (Chicago-style and Eastern-style), Slovenian-American, Czech-American, Mexican-American and the Papago Pima, a German/Arizonan/Native American polka in sometimes called “the chicken scratch.”

In class we’ll dance a traditional Polish polka and leave the chicken scratch for another day. As we dance we’re going to listen to “Ino Ano” by “Bolek” — Bolek Zawadski, to be exact. You can listen to samples of Bolek’s polkas from his album “Memories of Poland.”

So much more information:
About the polka | How to dance the polka: “the polka’s gonna get you hand-clappin’ and toe-tappin’ one two three, just like that” | The many kinds of polka in the U.S. | About
other global polka styles | The Mexican-American polka | Papago-Pima — “the chicken scratch” | A very graceful Polka | Betty and Merlin dance a less graceful but more charming polka: Happy 50th Anniversary! | “Beer Barrel Polka” performed by Canada’s Polka King, Walter Ostanek | Grammy-winning American polka legend Frank Yankovic (Frank is the older guy in the video) | Most of us know this accordion genius — “Weird Al.”

 

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Poland–Music

Poland’s population may not view its thousand years of dominance bysuccessive outside empires as as a good thing, but Polish musicians can appreciate the mark that this diversity of cultures has left on the nation. Polish traditional folk music began as a Slavic cousin of Ukrainian, Czeck and Russian cultural music, but became its own entity in the 17th century when it backed the central Polish mazurka, a bounding dance in 3/4 time. For the next three centuries much of Polish formal music developed in parallel with the nation’s popular dances:

— the mazurka: History of the mazurka
— the kujawiak: shower and more dignified than the mazurka but with the same beat
— the oberek: rapid and joyous
— the krakowiak: from Krakow in Southern Poland (“the national dance of Poland, and is generally performed in traditional Polish garb, with women in flowery skirts and aprons and men in embroidered vests and square hats.”)
— the polonez (the polonaise) “is a triple-time form derived from the 17th century chodzny, or ‘walking dance'”
— the POLKA!! (A lot about the polka below)

The surge of nationalism that swept Europe in the wake of the French Revolution inspired Polish artists to embrace traditional dances. Early Composer Frederic Chopin wrote 57 mazurkas and 16 polonaises in the early 19th century. Stanislaw Moniuszko’s opera, “Halka” (1848) has many folk themes.

Before World War II Poland was also a global center of the Jewish music known as “klezmer,” but Poland’s klezmer community perished in the Holocaust. There is a klezmer revival underway in Poland — Jewish culture even become sort of hip — though this raises many questions about Poland’s relationship with the Jews, then and now. We’ll learn more a lot about klezmer in subsequent weeks. After World War II the Soviets ruled Poland and tried to promote it as a land of happy peasants. The Soviets took the heart out of the nation’s vibrant “national music” by compelling folk musicians to perform in bland state ensembles. When the USSR fell, Poland’s musicians re-emerged and embraced traditional forms, while continuing the real Polish musical tradition of connecting with outside forms. Some Polish folk-fusion bands have become popular internationally, like the Trebunia Family Band (Polish-reggae fusion), Motion Trio (an experimental avant garde accordion trio) and the Warsaw Village Band, which attempts to reclaim folk music for Polish youth.

More information:
Poland’s klezmer revival | In Poland, is Jewish culture hip? | “Fake I.D.”: “This American Life” radio provides an account of the Jewish cultural revival in Poland

In class we’re going to listen to:

— “Usual Happiness” by Kroke from “Quartet — Live at Home” Kroke (which is Kraków in Yiddish) formed in 1992 when three friends, graduates of Kraków Academy of Music, united to play Jewish music, which they did so for tourists in the reconstructed Jewish quarter. They soon met director Steven Spielberg, who was filming “Schindler’s List” in Kraków, and, at his invitation, played a concert in Jerusalem at a reunion of Schindler’s survivors. They have since become well-known on the international music scene, playing music that one can call klezmer, but which has a nuanced, often darker edge. “At times,” reads a Klezmershack.com review of the Kroke album, “Acoustic Klezmer Music,” “it is almost as if the Velvet Underground have been reborn as a klezmer band.”

More information:
About Kroke | Kroke and Nigel Kennedy at WOMAD in 2004 | A great review of Kroke’s 2010 collaboration with violinist Nigel Kennedy

— “Joint Venture in the Village” by Warsaw Village Band from “People’s Spring.”

Since its founding in 1998 with the mission of rediscovering Polish identity after what band member and multi-instrumentalist Wojciech Krzak describes as “the nightmare of Communism,” Warsaw Village Band has become a global music phenomenon. The band’s members search Poland’s villages looking for lost and nearly-forgotten music and
musicians, rearranging traditional songs to make them modern, lively and relevant to Poles today. “The power of WVB’s music,” the band writes on its website, “lies primarily in the discovery of archaic folk themes. The atavistic and mystical nature of the universal and timeless message and also in the community meaning and experience of live music.” Sounds a bit haughty? It’s really not.

More information:
WOMAD’s bio of Warsaw Village Band | Warsaw Village Band’s website | Warsaw Village Band rocking out to “Åštyry Konie,” live | PopMatters picks Warsaw Village Band’s “Infinity” as the Best World Music album of 2009

Poland–Language

About fifty million people speak Polish, making it the third most widely spoken Slavic language after Russian and Ukrainian. Polish is a West Slavic language, which means its’ much more similar to Czech and Slovak than it is to Eastern Slavonic languages Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian, or to Southern Slavonic languages like Serbian, Croatian, Slovenian, Bulgarian and Macedonian. Of course Americans can learn to speak Polish, but there are many unfamiliar cases and pronunciations. Is Polish truly one of the world’s hardest languages to learn? (Watch out, Hungarian!)

 

Poland–When you go there

LonelyPlanet.com describes Poland as a nation that desperately tries to look to the future but can’t avoid its ample past. Poland is part of the European Union and is generally as modern and international as any other EU nation, but it also boasts a rustic, rural countryside dotted with medieval towns, each with its own ancient castle or Gothic church. Poland may be free of Soviet rule, and is quick to push that era aside, but has a more complicated relationship with its experience during the Holocaust. For example, visitors to Lublin can spend the day visiting the emotionally devastating museum at the Majdanek concentration camp and then dance all night at one of the city’s hottest nightclubs…Klub Hades.

Poland–Overview

Poland’s long and active history is the seemingly continual tale of a nation that forms, breaks apart, forms again, ultimately reforms the form, and then, in the end, often due to factors well beyond its control, morphs into something else to start the cycle all over. Polish historians mark this ebb and flow by pointing to three key partitions and three key republics in the county’s history. We’ll start our look at Polish history a thousand years ago and go republic by republic, partition by partition until we arrive at the independent Poland of today.

Poland formed as a nation in the northern European flatlands over a thousand years ago — in 966 to be exact — when King Miesko I adopted Catholicism as his state’s religion. Over the next several centuries most Poles became Catholic and, after a few twists and turns, developed a rather unified country. In 1569 Poland joined forces with the Lithuania to form the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, called “The First Polish Republic“…until the union collapsed in 1772, when it split into territories that came under Prussian, Russian and Austrian rule (called “the First Polish Partition.”) The Second Polish Partition took place in 1793, when Prussia and Russia split up the land, then Austria got back into the game again in 1795 for the Third Polish Partition.

Poland finally unified again in 1918 as the Second Polish Republic, but in 1939 Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union invaded. Poland didn’t present much of a military challenge to these massive powers, but on the other hand, unlike the other countries the Nazis conquered, the Poles never formally surrendered. World War II was horrendous for Poland; the nation lost over six million citizens in the War — 3 million Jews, approximately 95% of its Jewish population, and 3 million Polish Christians.

Until World War II Poland was religiously diverse — a Roman Catholic nation with substantial Jewish, Protestant and Christian Orthodox minorities. Since World War II Poland has become almost entirely Roman Catholic; today, almost 90% of the population belongs to the Catholic Church.

Poland emerged from the war as “the People’s Republic of Poland” — a nation firmly within the sphere of the Soviet Union. Some Polish leaders challenged the Soviets, but the Soviets continually asserted control. In the early 1980s the independent trade union “Solidarity” became a popular and political force. (The original version of one the songs that’s on our CD, “Garnitur Spod Igly,” is a labor-era song about the power differential between well-dressed ruling class and the rest of the population, ending in a rousing call for freedom.) The Soviets tried to push back again, but by 1989 Solidarity was strong enough that it defeated the Communists in parliamentary elections, officially ushering in the Third Polish Republic. In 1990 Lech Walesa, a Solidarity candidate, even became president.

Since the end of Soviet rule Poland has embraced the free market and transformed its economy into one of the most active of all the former Warsaw Pact nations. In 1999 Poland joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and in 2004 it became part of the European Union.

Today Poland is vibrant, modern and increasingly ethnically and religiously diverse. The economy may not be booming, but it’s no longer stagnant and Soviet. Over a thousand years Poland has experienced several periods of renewal, only to fall again to the rule of an outside power. Could the Third Polish Republic last? Is this Poland’s true golden age?

More information:
Wikipedia on Poland | A timeline of Polish history | The importance of religion in Poland | Liberum veto: A Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth parliamentary device that allowed any member of the Sejm to immediately end the session and cancel all previously passed legislation by yelling, Nie pozwalam!, Polish for “I do not allow!” (Did it cause the Commonwealth’s demise?) | Historical pictures of historical Poland | What role did the Polish people play in the Holocaust? The answer is very complicated. | The recent tragic death of the Polish president and other leading Poles

IMAGES:

Poland may once have had the reputation in the West of being a dreary Soviet nation, but since the fall of the USSR, at least according to its representation in the Flickr.com’s Poland slideshow, it has reclaimed the colors of its past. There are few images here of Soviet-style military might and more pictures of sprawling green countryside, vibrant cultural life and people (and even architecture) with a wry sense of humor. If you’d like to focus more specifically on the Poles, search flickr.com for “Polish people.” If you’re at all interested in Polish buildings, buildings, buildings — okay, they’re very pretty buildings — check out ChristopherHolt’s Poland galleries.)

Remember to take a look through these images once before showing the kids.