Marysia’s Voice

Abstract

This chapter examines the life and career of Marysia Mąka. She spent her childhood and early adulthood in the Podhale region in the Tatra Mountains of southern Poland as a Górale or Highlander, singing with local groups. In 1992, at age twenty-nine, she migrated to Toronto, Canada, where singing enabled her to sustain and renew her sense of personal identity in relation to motherhood and ethnicity. Within a framework of dislocation, local contexts, and a happy marriage and family life, Marysia creates community through her singing and compositions, using her voice to maintain connections to landscape, people, a sense of home, and language.