Image via Facebook / Milwaukee Polka Riot
Milwaukee Polka Riot celebrates alternative permutations of the folkloric dance music of Central Eastern European, carried by immigrants to the Midwest, and with which the Cream City is still associated. To the event’s organizer, most polka is alternative.
Evan Maruszewski, the Polka Riot kingpin and member of hometown polka/hip-hop fusion band November Criminals, breaks down the alt categorization of most polka thusly. “Go back in time to Bohemia. We could make a historical, anthropological argument that as polka spread from country to country and different people used different instruments and dance moves and languages, they were the very first people to create ‘alternative polka’? Maybe that's a stretch, but I like the idea.”
But, as is the case with his politically charged music with the 'Criminals, Maruszewski's Riot isn't merely about the various European-American developments in the peppy 2/2 rhythm that populates the airtime of (what's left of) polka radio nowadays. This year the annual day-long fest, taking place at Great Lakes Distillery, encompasses a diasporic approach to ethnic, community-based folksy, danceable musical genres.
As Maruszewski puts it, “If I was bullied into listing three criteria, a band should draw inspiration from a traditional musical form, should have fun with that form and play with its rules and patterns, and a band should be cool and generally nice people I can fall in love with.”
Wide Musical Range
That generosity of curatorial spirit allows the Riot’s inclusion of Maruszewski's main group and his zydeco prog rock side project, Preomnor, as well as Chicago polka pop punk progenitors Dead Freddie, freewheeling Madison klezmer acolytes Yid Vicious and their fellow Madisonian Brazilian music mongers Forró Fo Sho, among others. If Maruszewski's musical philosophy for the Riot’s values giddy aural cross-pollination, it also foregrounds the music in ways it may not have first been intended.
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“Because a lot of these bands play what I would call background gigs, where they create an atmosphere where people can drink beer and eat food and dance and laugh and enjoy life, the band’s job is to be atmospheric, just blend into the ambiance and play music for three hours,” Maruszewski explains.
Conversely, he adds, “The Polka Riot is a place where we give these bands an audience that is rapt and engaged one hundred per cent. And trust me, these bands, every single one of them, demands your full attention.” One of those acts, Denver’s The Polkanauts, merits audience attention by sharing the stage with what Maruszewski describes as a “10-foot-tall skeletal space gorilla who plays accordion.” A band need not have such a spectacle accompanying their sound to gain a slot on a future Polka Riot line-up, though. “Every time a kid picks up an instrument and decides they're gonna do something weird with it,” predicts Maruszewski, “there’s always the chance they’ll be Riot material eventually.”
Giving that Maruszewski presents Milwaukee Polka Riot as an event without cover charge, thank to Summerfest’s Rebel Stage and other sponsors, he has a personal motivation in staging an eight-hour party with free soda for designated drivers.
“I want to see these bands all play in my hometown,” he explains. “I want to give them an enthusiastic audience that gets it, and will enjoy the hell out of what they do so well. I want to expose an ever-growing audience to these bands and the music they make, which is just so damned good it hurts. Milwaukee is already the city of festivals, so why shouldn’t it be the hub for alternative polka and all the related groups doing stuff that is so wildly creative? I want that for my city, and I want to be a part of that, however small.”
Milwaukee Polka Riot, 1-9 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 28 at Great Lakes Distillery, 616 W. Virginia St.
