The music of the Polish diaspora

Contemporary Review, Jan, 2004 by Iwo Zaluski

After the Allied Circle gig, Marek and I walked home from Marble Arch to Ealing, carrying a guitar and an amplifier, each of us 25 shillings richer having played from 8 pm till 2 am. But we had enjoyed ourselves so we were not ungrateful, and continued to dream of greater things to come.

Meanwhile, I went into teaching, while the Tony Russell Quartet ticked over at weekends for the next three years. The turning point came in 1963, when we did a couple of gigs at the Polish Hearth, in Kensington's Exhibition Road. Its function, which is still going strong after nearly 60 years, was to keep the Polish spirit alive. It had reading rooms, a conference room, a very good restaurant, a shop selling Polish books and knick-knacks, and a bar in the basement, Pod Pegazem (the Pegasus). Jas Peski could be found there most nights, playing the piano--anything from pop hits through tangos to Wagner. It was a meeting place for young Poles, and we all used to go there regularly and make half a pint last a whole evening. On the first floor was the ballroom, where we used to dance to a Polish band called Domino, a typical, functional, jobbing 'wedding' band of the day, consisting of saxophone, piano and drums. Marek and I joined up with them, and formed a new, improved Domino. The new set-up developed in a direction similar to that of the Irish Showbands of the era--all round entertainers.

We were now four, all Poles; drummer Stanislaw Koralewicz, the only original Domino, Marek on guitar, and Jozef Tarasiuk and myself on keyboards, which included, as they appeared on the market during the creative and prolific 1960s, accordion, piano, clavioline, organ, pianotron and synthesisers. I also played clarinet and bass guitar, and was the lead singer. Three of us sang in harmony--in seven languages. Our repertoire consisted of anything and everything from Beatles to tangos, from Viennese waltzes to Greek sirtakis, from Latin American to Polkas, and I also wrote a number of original pop songs in English, Spanish and Polish. We picked up all the summer holiday hits in Spain and Italy, and we all relived our nights in hot and sweaty Majorcan nightclubs on the dancefloors of the numerous Polish clubs that had sprung up all over London in the post-war years. We bantered with the audience and cracked bilingual jokes that went over the heads of non-Polish speakers. We thus cornered and dominated the very lively London Polish social scene.

Poles have always formed societies and organised dances or balls at the slightest excuse, and because a good time could be had from an evening with Domino, the excuses came fast and furiously. We had all the work we needed as a semi-professional band purely from the Polish market, at which we aimed our repertoire. Polish tastes in music tend to be reactionary: the full force of the Swinging Sixties touched emigre Poland but superficially, and most Poles liked the Beatles and Stones, but eschewed Pink Floyd, Frank Zappa and Cream. Latin American music and, especially, the Tango seem to be built into the Polish psyche--a phenomenon also found in Finland. We were sometimes requested to play nothing but tangos the whole evening. The Polish perennial and ongoing love affair with all things Italian meant importing all the romantic Italian ballads of the 50s and 60s, which we learned phonetically from records bought on holiday. We must have been good at it, because we have been taken for Italians by Italians, and for Spaniards by Spaniards. Curiously enough, Poles from Poland found our Polish accents quaint and anglicised. A Polka would bring everyone out onto the floor, and would cause the building to shake, as would those essentials towards the end of the evening, Zorba's Dance and Hava Nagila.