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Slovenian-style polka (also known as Cleveland Style polka) is an American style of polka in the Slovenian tradition. It is usually associated with Cleveland and other Midwestern cities.
The Slovenian style polka band always includes a piano accordion, chromatic accordion, or the Diatonic button accordion (also called a "button box"). Sometimes an accordion called the Half Chromatic, often abbreviated half-chrom, is used. This accordion has a right side similar to a three-row B-system chromatic accordion, but a bass side similar to the Diatonic button accordion. Some bands in Slovenia use keyboard instead of accordion. The other melody instrument is a saxophone or clarinet, and the rhythm instruments include drums, bass, and guitar or banjo. The Avsenik brothers also add a trumpet to their sound. The Slovenian style polka in the United States of America came about when immigrants from Slovenia taught the old songs to their children. Those children, as adults, translated the old songs from Slovene into English, and arranged them in a polka beat. This began the oral tradition of Cleveland-style polka music.
At first, Slovenian style polka was just music for ethnic clubs and union halls. However, the commercial success of Frankie Yankovic (Jankovič) and other musicians soon introduced the genre to a wider audience. William Lausche incorporated the elements of classical music and early jazz; at this point, the style took on a type of swing that can be heard in his piano playing, even on some early Yankovic recordings. Johnny Pecon and Lou Trebar consequently extended the style to its farthest reaches harmonically, including blue notes, substitutions and compounded symbolism, elements of whole-tone scales, modality, borrowed and altered chords homophonically or in the implied or broken form and compounded and odd rhythmic embellishments or reductions, in addition to the use of structural and textural dynamics and phrasing that had up to that point never been utilized to such a degree.
In addition to Frankie Yankovic, the most important pioneers in developing this style of music include Matt Hoyer, Dr. William Lausche, Johnny Pecon, Lou Trebar, Johnny Vadnal, Eddie Habat, and Kenny Bass.
The music heard during scene transitions on The Drew Carey Show is played in Cleveland-style polka to suit the city it is set in.
Accordions are a family of box-shaped musical instruments of the bellows-driven free reed aerophone type. The essential characteristic of the accordion is to combine in one instrument a melody section, also called the diskant, usually on the right-hand keyboard, with an accompaniment or Basso continuo functionality on the left-hand. The musician normally plays the melody on buttons or keys on the right-hand side, and the accompaniment on bass or pre-set chord buttons on the left-hand side. A person who plays the accordion is called an accordionist.
Polka is a dance and genre of dance music originating in nineteenth-century Bohemia, now part of the Czech Republic. Though associated with Czech culture, polka is popular throughout Europe and the Americas.
Frank John Yankovic was an American accordion player and polka musician. Known as "America's Polka King", Yankovic was considered the premier artist to play in the Slovenian style during his long career. He was not related to fellow accordionist "Weird Al" Yankovic, although the two collaborated.
Slavko Avsenik was a Slovene composer and musician. Beginning in 1953 with the formation of the Avsenik Brothers Ensemble, Avsenik produced more than 1,000 songs and garnered success both in Slovenia and in other parts of Europe and America, and is viewed as a Slovenian cultural icon.
The term conjunto refers to several types of small musical ensembles present in different Latin American musical traditions, mainly in Mexico and Cuba. While Mexican conjuntos play styles such as norteño and tejano, Cuban conjuntos specialize in the son, as well as its derivations such as salsa.
The garmon, commonly called garmoshka, is a kind of Russian button accordion, a free-reed wind instrument. A garmon has two rows of buttons on the right side, which play the notes of a diatonic scale, and at least two rows of buttons on the left side, which play the primary chords in the key of the instrument as well as its relative harmonic minor key. Many instruments have additional right-hand buttons with useful accidental notes, additional left-hand chords for playing in related keys, and a row of free-bass buttons, to facilitate playing of bass melodies.
Ladislav John "Walter" Ostanek, CM is a Canadian musician. He is known as "Canada's Polka King." He has received twenty-one nominations for Grammy Awards and won three.
A button accordion is a type of accordion on which the melody-side keyboard consists of a series of buttons. This differs from the piano accordion, which has piano-style keys. Erich von Hornbostel and Curt Sachs categorize it as a free reed aerophone in their classification of instruments, published in 1914. The sound from the instrument is produced by the vibration of air in reeds. Button accordions of various types are particularly common in European countries and countries where European people settled. The button accordion is often confused with the concertina; the button accordion's buttons are on the front of the instrument, where as the concertina's are on the sides and pushed in parallel with the bellows.
A chromatic button accordion is a type of button accordion where the melody-side keyboard consists of rows of buttons arranged chromatically. The bass-side keyboard is usually the Stradella system or one of the various free-bass systems. Included among chromatic button accordions are the Russian bayan and Schrammel accordion. There can be 3 to 5 rows of vertical treble buttons. In a 5 row chromatic, two additional rows repeat the first 2 rows to facilitate options in fingering.
A melodeon or diatonic button accordion is a member of the free-reed aerophone family of musical instruments. It is a type of button accordion on which the melody-side keyboard contains one or more rows of buttons, with each row producing the notes of a single diatonic scale. The buttons on the bass-side keyboard are most commonly arranged in pairs, with one button of a pair sounding the fundamental of a chord and the other the corresponding major triad.
A Schrammel accordion is an accordion with a melody keyboard in the chromatic B-Griff system and a twelve-button diatonic bass keyboard. It is named for a traditional combination of two violins, accordion or clarinet, and contraguitar known as a Schrammelquartet – a group that played Schrammelmusik in the Vienna chamber music tradition.
The National Cleveland-Style Polka Hall of Fame and Museum is a museum in Euclid, Ohio, United States. It traces the history of the Cleveland-style polka, from its Slovenian roots from the 19th century, through American factory and mining towns where it absorbed jazz and country expressions, to the post-war years when top ten polka hits got the nation on the dance floor.
Anton Mervar was a manufacturer of Slovenian button accordions.
Polka is a music and dance style that originated in Bohemia in the 1830s and came to American society with immigrants from Europe. A fast style in 2
4 time, and often associated with the pre–World War II era, polka remains a dynamic "niche" music in America.
Joseph Michael Miskulin is an American accordionist and producer. In a music career spanning more than four decades, Joey Miskulin has collaborated with a range of artists including Johnny Cash, John Denver, Emmylou Harris, Paul McCartney, Ricky Skaggs, Ricky Van Shelton, Andy Williams, Frankie Yankovic, as well as many others. He is a performer, studio musician, producer and pedagogue.
A Cajun accordion, also known as a squeezebox, is single-row diatonic button accordion used for playing Cajun and Creole music.
The accordion is in a wide variety of musical genres, mainly in traditional and popular music. In some regions, such as in Europe and North America, it has become mainly restricted to traditional, folk and ethnic music. Nonetheless, the button accordion (melodeon) and the piano accordion are widely taught and played in Ireland, and have remained a steady fixture within Irish traditional music, both in Ireland and abroad, particularly in the United States and Great Britain. Numerous virtuoso Irish accordion players have recorded many albums over the past century or so; the earliest Irish music records were made in the 1920s, in New York City, by fiddler and Sligo immigrant Michael Coleman, widely considered to have paved the way for other traditional musicians to record themselves. Accordions are also played within other Celtic styles, as well as in English traditional music, American traditional music, polka, Galician folk music, and Eastern European folk music.
The Steirische Harmonika is a type of bisonoric diatonic button accordion important to the alpine folk music of Croatia, Slovenia, the Czech Republic, Austria, the German state of Bavaria, and the Italian South Tyrol. The Steirische Harmonika is distinguished from other diatonic button accordions by its typically richer bass notes, and by the presence of one key per scale row that has the same tone on both compression and expansion of the bellows, called a Gleichton. The bass notes earn the distinction Helikonbässe because they use bigger reeds with duralumin reed frames and a special chamber construction that amplifies its bass tones to give it a loud sound reminiscent of a Helicon tuba.