Polka music sets the tone for a hearty holiday event What with the promise of a polka mass, followed by a 10-course lunch and an afternoon of fast and furious dancing, the event at Polonia Banquets… ...

While Chicago had once been a polka music capital some 50 to 60 years ago, now there are few places to hear it live and dance to it, Stras said. Keith Stras of Elgin with Polka Confetti, ...

Like country music–they’re singing about what’s going on in today’s society. I don’t know if you can adapt a polka song to a lot of those themes. But that’s the road you have to go ...

Keith G. Stras is on a mission to save polka, which is to say he has his work cut out for him. The demographic outlook for the music is bleak: young people are not embracing polka, and as for the ...

“Polka music is happiness,” said Lou Dedo, an 86-year-old retired Coast Guard worker and widower who credits polka for fending off sadness after he lost his wife, Rose.

But soon afterward, Lucky Four Records owner Lennie LaCour said Blazonczyk, then 22, should focus instead on polka music. "I took his advice, and never regretted it," Blazonczyk said in the release.

Eddie Blazonczyk, a Grammy Award-winning polka musician who began playing the lively music in the 1950s and went on to earn the nickname “Polka King” after starting his own band and record ...

The slower music also allowed couples extra time between beats to throw in a little hop, which would become known as Chicago’s polka hop. Today, couples dance the polka hop from coast to coast.

The dance floor at Major Hall is packed. And it's only 10 in the morning. Many of the circling couples come to this Northwest Side dance hall every week to hear the Major Pensionaires. They stake ...

Works Cited & Suggested Reading: Greene, Victor. A Passion for Polka. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992. Keil, Charles, Angeliki V. Keil, and Dick Blau.

Considering the plight of Jan Lewan, the so-called ‘Polka King’, Culture.pl examines the origins of polka music. How much influence from Poland does the classic sound of Polish America really contain?