Polka Heartland: Why the Midwest Loves to Polka by Dick Blau and Rick March

Abstract

Reviewed by: Polka Heartland: Why the Midwest Loves to Polka by Dick Blau and Rick March Kari Veblen Dick Blau and Rick March, Polka Heartland: Why the Midwest Loves to Polka. Madison: Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2015. 200 pp. $29.95. In Polka Heartland, glorious photographs and compelling narrative showcase the polka as a midwestern genre with particular focus on the Wisconsin context. Stereotypes are simple—contemporary cultural practices are anything but. In the case of the polka, this infectious art-form defies easy classification. The polka is both a dance and a loosely defined kind of music. Neither music nor dance steps are monolithic as there are diasporic interpretations through German, Polish, Croatian, Tex-Mex, Irish, Czech-Bohemian, Yugoslav, Scandinavian, and other polka variants. Collaborators Dick Blau and Rick March create an absorbing account here with their combined talents. Professor Emeritus of Film at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Dick Blau's photography is exhibited in [End Page 100] numerous museum collections. Blau's subjects range from psychological portraiture, to personal family dynamics, to celebrations that include music and dance, ritual and gesture. He has documented polka extensively and co-authored three photo-ethnographies. Musician and folklorist Richard March brings his deep immersion in the polka scene as well as his considerable experiences as Wisconsin State Folklorist and co-host of Wisconsin Public Radio's "Down Home Dairyland." These collaborators are well positioned to continue the growing scholarship of this vernacular practice alongside colleagues such as James P. Leary, Victor Greene, Robert Waltzer, Charles Keil, Angeliki Keil, Paula Savaglio, David J. Jackson, Ann Hetzel Gunkel and others. The book unfolds in ten chapters, beginning with the author's own connections to polka, followed by an account of the 1986 Ellsworth Polka Festival. Chapter two explores origins of the polka, which exploded as a European dance fad in the 1840s. March examines and questions early accounts of traditional origins: Connecting the polka to peasant origins would have appealed to Romantic-era intellectuals, who were infatuated with the idea of peasant culture but had little knowledge of actual peasants and their ways. … In fact, no one can show a specific central European peasant dance that clearly is the antecedent of the polka. (27) March considers the waltz, an earlier couples' dance that shocked conservative sensibilities, to be a more likely model for the later, even more shocking polka. Chapter three traces polka's migration to America as a craze hitting New York in the 1840s. At this time polka was a mainstream dance unconnected to ethnicity and so popular that entrepreneurs linked their products to the dance. Save for the polka dot, most of these commercial enterprises are forgotten. Polka sheet music illustrations memorialize local doings and fashions: fabulous fowls on display for Barnum's National Poultry Show, Punch and Judy puppet shows, and politically oriented themes such as "The Battery Wagner" honoring the Southern Confederacy. The "Hippopotamus Polka" commemorated the 1850 gift of a young hippo to the London Zoo from the Ottoman pasha of Egypt and is preserved in a copper-plate etching of a hippopotamus in suit coat cavorting with a hoop-skirted lady in ringlets and bows. [End Page 101] American variations of the dance are explored through chapter four. Factors such as the development of instruments (saxophone, accordions and concertinas) and instrumental groups such as the brass band and marching band fed into emerging polka variations. March comments that nationally-identified polka traditions were in a period of incubation from the 1880s to 1920s, and that ethnic variations beginning to emerge toward the end of that time period. Chapters five through nine sample the diversity of current polka styles in the Upper Midwest: Wisconsin "Bohemian," Dutchman-style, Polish, Slovenian, and Mexican variations. In this section vignettes, mini-ethnographies, and interviews brings the dance to life. Key figures in each genre as well as instrument makers, important musical families, and influential bands are highlighted. As well, there are interludes throughout the book devoted to beer's long association with the dance, the Polka Mass, the Concertina Bar and other topics. In chapter five, the Wisconsin "Bohemian" style is represented by an array of ensembles derived from town...