By Magda Kuszewska
14 February 2007

Despised by some but loved by many, "Disco Polo" music is making a spectacular comeback. It is no longer only heard in Polish villages but has made its way into exclusive nightclubs, and its exponents are getting ready to reconquer the market.

Disco Polo emerged in Poland in the 1980s and was initially dubbed "sidewalk music." "You bought cassettes of such music from makeshift stalls in the street, literally straight from the sidewalk, hence the name," said sociologist Mirosław Pęczak. For years, Italy had its Italo Disco and so in the early 1990s, Sławomir Skręta, owner of the Blue Star record label in Reguły near Warsaw, coined the term Disco Polo. "The genre originates from the folk music that various bands play at weddings and barn dances," Pęczak said.

In the first half of the 1990s, this genre-in which acoustic instruments were gradually replaced by electric ones-became massively popular but interestingly enough, it was deprived of mainstream media exposure. Huge numbers of cassettes and CDs, recorded outside the official music industry, were sold. Disco Polo finally made its way onto the TV around 1995. Its status got a huge boost before the 1995 presidential elections when Disco Polo bands were invited to the election campaigns of Waldemar Pawlak and the prospective president Aleksander Kwaśniewski. The politicians knew exactly how to reach out to the masses.

Changing trends
In the late 1990s, sales of tapes and CDs of Disco Polo suddenly dwindled by an estimated 50 percent. The record buying public began to prefer Polish pop, rock and hip hop and foreign acts. Pęczak said: "Polish pop music flourished in the 1990s and Disco Polo gave way to acts such as Andrzej Piaseczny and Edyta Górniak, whose albums sold staggering numbers of copies. What was very characteristic was that the buyers were the same people who had been listening to Disco Polo before."

And the sidewalk music? It returned back where it started, the countryside. Still, a few years have passed and the situation is changing. "Today, Poland is missing good pop music again," Pęczak said. "There is a new Disco Polo music festival in Ostróda, and the Polish public has suddenly remembered these bands again." Pęczak is a little surprised that Disco Polo musicians have started receiving invitations to high-profile events, which they would never have been invited to before, such as the Juwenalia student festival. "This genre is about pure, straightforward entertainment and that is how I perceive it," Pęczak said. Suddenly, exclusive Warsaw clubs like Klubokawiarnia and Piekarnia are throwing parties where people are raving to Disco Polo.

"They must be doing this for kicks," said Justyna Zając, a PR manager. "Besides, I cannot really draw a line between Disco Polo and the Polish disco hits of the 1980s. For all it's worth, Disco Polo calls to mind a caricatured image of the Polish provinces."

Evolution?
Critics say some Disco Polo performers have evolved, the prime example being Stachursky, who migrated fluently to dance music over several years. Then again, Disco Polo oldies like the Boys group are holding strong on the Disco Polo scene. Still, the music and lyrics written by these performers have improved and increasingly, the musicians sing live. You could explain these changes with the upgraded musical equipment and the acts' better sense of what is hot in music.

"I dare say Disco Polo never really went away," said Krzysztof Beśka, a writer and ex-vocalist in band that plays sea shanty-style music. "The fact that it is no longer on the air on Polsat TV, which officially renounced the genre, does not mean that people are no longer listening to it. Just go to a wedding party in the countryside."

Under fire
Right from the beginning, fans of other kinds of music criticized Disco Polo with a passion. The main criticisms included the genre's naive lyrics, poor performance quality and banality, the latter due to the frequent rehashing of Polish and foreign hits of the 1960s and 1970s. Interestingly enough, however, the harsh criticism never harmed Disco Polo's popularity. At the same time, some well-known performers of the older generation, such as Bohdan Smoleń, Andrzej Rosiewicz and Krzysztof Krawczyk contributed to the rise of Disco Polo in an attempt to return to the spotlight.

This month marks the 15th anniversary of an event that symbolically catapulted the music genre into the domain of accepted entertainment. In February 1992, the Kongresowa Hall in the Palace of Culture and Science hosted the Gala of Popular and Sidewalk Music. The set design was deliberately kitsch, and yet the response from the audience was overwhelming. People were delighted and many showbiz aficionados realized that the sidewalk music concert at Warsaw's most prestigious venue had been a turning point. They realized that the public had to be finally taken seriously.

Success and envy
Krzysztof Beśka explains the music community's hostility to Disco Polo performers as an expression of envy. "That's just the way our music community is," the writer and musician said. "Try and sell more albums, become a big success and you'll see what they can do to you..." He is indulgent towards the genre that stirs extreme emotions from love to hate. "Strange as it sounds, the Disco Polo phenomenon has the same source that masterpieces by Chopin do," Beśka said. "It draws on folklore, the great book of folk songs. It ranges from humor to melancholy, when necessary. Country music is a powerful industry in the United States, and Poland is copying that. Cowboys just mind cows, you could call them farmers. Appropriately updated, farmers' music becomes Disco Polo. Actress Kasia Bujakiewicz, who played a Disco Polo singer in Kochaj i rób co chcesz, once told me the music was excellent to clean windows to."

Tomasz Cybula, a philosopher, English philologist and opera fan, has a different view of the Disco Polo phenomenon. "Listening to Disco Polo has nothing in common with listening to classical music, when you speak about the music in terms of beauty and harmony," he said. "Disco Polo songs are all about fun, and good fun is the prerequisite of a successful wedding or any other party. This applies to simple folk just as it does to well-educated people. I can see nothing wrong in dancing to sidewalk music at a party," Cybula added. His attitude probably helps to explain why Disco Polo is making such a big comeback.


The most popular Disco Polo acts:
Akcent, Amadeo, Bayer Full, Big Dance, Boys, Cassablanca, Classic, Dystans, Fanatic, 4Ever, Mega Dance, Milano, Mister Dex, Shazza, Skalar, Skaner, Tia Maria, Top One, Toples, Vabank, Venus, Voyager and Weekend.

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