Rediscovering roots

When I was a little girl, my best friend was Polish and lived in the house behind mine. We wore the chain link fence between us down with our constant climbing over for visits, much to my father’s disapproval.
     Her mother would say things like “let’s go by Aunt Mary’s house to visit” instead of let’s go to Aunt Mary’s house to visit, and when I started unconsciously imitating that phraseology, my mother immediately corrected me and told me not to talk in that “Polish” way.
     Aunt Mary lived in a Polish enclave of Detroit called Hamtramck, and I often did visit there with my friend Judi and her family. There were two-and three-story tenement houses there, unlike the low-slung ranch houses in my suburban neighborhood, but there was food like kielbasa and pierogis and other unpronounceable things and I always had a good time.
     At Polish weddings, there was always a band with an accordion and they played things like “The Philadelphia Polka” (remember that from the movie “Groundhog Day”?), “Roll Out the Barrel” and other ethnic songs that non-Poles, probably including me, tended to dismiss as low-brow.
     In fact, the many Poles in my neighborhood and school faced a lot of subtle derision, like the Polack jokes that none of us thought anything about repeating. Even they laughed, probably in self-defense.
     I’m ashamed now, of my childhood insensitivity.
     Why does all this come to mind today?
     Because I spent Labor Day weekend at a fantastic music festival in Rhode Island, Rhythm and Roots, where many of the musicians work hard to preserve ancient musical heritages.
     And not all of them are on the stage.
     In the camping area, little mini-festivals go on day and night, and one of them, on Sunday morning, was hosted by a group called Polka Dan and the Beetbox Band – and they were every bit as good as the paid help.  They had maybe a hundred people dancing on the grass to polka tunes (sans accordion) like the ones I mentioned (and “You Can Have Her, I don’t Want Her, She’s Too Big For Me” and “Who Stole the Keeshka”) and Dan was very clear about his message – he wants to preserve his culture’s music and celebrate it in a way the mainstream culture never has. Besides, as he says, polka music is “fun music.”
     His was just one of the many groups I had never seen before. Did you know Hugh Laurie, of “House” fame, is a damn fine musician with a blues band of his own? Or that an incredibly talented, intelligent, group called The Carolina Chocolate Drops is researching and performing some of the lost, beautiful, early works of black American musicians?
     I’ve always known that what we experience as children helps form who we are, but I never that about how what we hear as children does, as well – from generation to generation.
     I wish Aunt Mary was still alive so I could go by and visit her.