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Polka Flash Mob

Today is not a bad day — no day is a bad day — for a POLKA FLASH MOB.

Nowadays you can find a place to dance the Czech/Polish dance known as Polka in most large cities around the Western world, and not just in traditional Polish beer halls. There many kinds of Polka in the U.S.: Polish-American, Slovenian-American, Czech-American, Mexican-American and the Papago Pima, a German/Arizonan/Native American polka in sometimes called “the chicken scratch.” Polka may not be quite as popular in Asia, but don’t tell that to the enthusiastic  dancers from this video’s Tokyo Polka Flash Mob.

Poland, the Czech Republic, and One Great Dance

All Around This World map of Eastern Europe featuring Czechia and Poland

This week in our online classes we visited two nations in Eastern Europe that each have a thousand years of history behind them — Poland and the Czech Republic. The Czechs and Poles have been neighbors for a millennium, though they have “a special relationship” and have fought much less often with each other than with nations nearby, like Austria, Germany and Russia. In class we focus not on squabbles but on something Czechs and Poles share……. POLKA! Let’s go.

Getting Married in the Czech Republic? Spin Around, Spin Around

“Tancuj Tancuj” is popular Czech wedding song — a polka you’ll certainly hear if you’re lucky enough to go to a Czech or Slovak wedding.

This lively polka implores dancers to dance and spin with abandon — “Tancuj tancuj” means “dance, dance” and the next words of the original, “vykrúcaj vykrúcaj,” mean “spin around, spin around” — but, as this translation provided by Mama Lisa’s World tells us, one must be careful! “Just don’t make my stove fall down, fall down…A stove is good in the winter, winter…not everyone has a down comforter, comforter.”

Plastic People of the Universe

The best band name ever may veery well be Czechoslovakia’s “Plastic People of the Universe.”

Throughout the 1960s the people of Czechoslovakia demanded the ruling Communists increase social, political and economic freedom. In 1968, after a period of exuberant freedom known as “Prague Spring,” the Soviets sent troops to reassert control. In 1976 the government arrested four members of the Velvet Underground and Frank Zappa-influenced rock group, The Plastic People of the Universe, who we see in this video, accusing their lyrics as possessing “extreme vulgarity with an anti-socialist and an anti-social impact, most of them extolling nihilism, decadence and clericalism.” After a controversial and very public trial, several members of the band faced prison sentences or went into exile in the West. The Plastic People broke up in the late ’80s though they did reunite in 1997, celebrating the successful emergence of Czechoslovakia from Soviet rule.

The Worldliness of Cankisou

Let’s start our week of music from the Czech Republic and Poland with Čankišou — one of our favorite Czech bands.

Čankišou is a Czech “world fusion” band that blends Eastern European/Balkan brass with international influences from the Arab nations and India. We see them in this video performing live in concert, appropriately, in Pakistan.