The appearance and swift rise to popularity of disco proved a valid point: people wanted to dance and couldn't do it to rock music. Disco accelerated the heartbeat and guided the limbs. It was also functional - it could be played from records, without the presence of an entire band. The beginnings of disco are linked with minority social groups; the clubs of New York gathered American Italians and Latinos, the black community and sexual minorities. From North American big cities to Europe, disco quickly made its way across the ocean and spread throughout the world.
Italo Disco (the Italian branch of European disco) took over clubs in Turin, Hamburg, Belgrade, Moscow, Riga, and came all the way to Poland, to Sopot and Opole. Poland was getting on board with the trend and the first Polish Tournament of Disco Presenters (DJs) took place in 1973 in Wrocław. By the 90s, the country was flooded by its own brand of disco called disco polo – a genre between electronic music and party music, derived from disco, Euro disco and contemporary folk tunes, and influenced by Italo disco and Polish folk songs. It can be compared to Balkan turbofolk, which mixes the keyboard with folk music. Since then, many "fascinating" disco polo songs, ones that stand out from mainstream commercial hits, have continued to surprise. "Someone once accurately said that disco is about dancing and crying at the same time," journalist and blogger Olga Drenda said in an interview for Culture.pl,
Before the appearance of disco there was the so-called "dancing music", which was a variation of concert music that one could dance to. In Poland, there was the band Happy End and Zbigniew Wodecki's song Chałupy / Welcome to. When I think back to Polish disco from the 70s and 80s, I either think of a type of eurovision music, slightly pompous, or sounds mixing jazz and funk which, today, are reactivated by authors of the compilation The Very Polish Cut Outs. The other side of the coin is the need to cry on the dancefloor, which Poles could do thanks to Italo disco, then through the gently melancholic hits of Germany (especially those of Dieter Bohlen and his followers). Disco polo was founded on these currents - those of dance, put into minor scales on synthesisers.
Halina Żytkowiak – A Moment Lasts a Moment
Polish Disco Vol. 1 Magnetic Tape on Cassette. The lyrics "Taste how the moment lasts a moment aha!" captures the essence of disco culture. Halina Żytkowiak's 1978 record Jestem tylko dziewczyną (I'm only a girl) was the first genuine Polish disco record. It can be easily recognised by the sound of wind instruments.
You're tired of the world, come to the disco with me come aha
Don't hug me, keep your distances aha
ah ah ah at least once
taste how the moment lasts a moment aha
don't say anything to me, just be the rhythm aha
I'll give you strength, close your eyes as if you were dreaming, oh yes
Zdzisława Sośnicka – Forgive me, Forgive me Once More
The look of the album cover of Odcienie samotności ( Shades of Loneliness) from 1980 is deceiving. The songs on the album are dance hits and not music to a Passion Play, though the comparison isn't entirely incorrect. The album is an example of Slavic ''melancholic disco'' and the songs are more like the progressive rock of singing legend Czesław Niemen than disco hits.
Forgive me, Forgive me Once More, this one time more
Forgive me, Forgive me Once More, this one time more
A year has gone by, I wait still for you to come, to come
Krystyna Prońko – Who Gave Us Rain
Another example of Polish melancholic disco. Kto dał nam deszcz (Who Gave Us Rain) shows how disco can be close to high culture. The song has more in common with jazz than dance music.
When on the sixth day the Lord
Lit up a smoke and sat by the river,
He thought that the time of hope had come...
and created us.
Kombi – Hug me (Old Spice Edit)
Przytul mnie (Hug Me) is one of Kombi's greatest compositions. Its blissful and lounge-like sound reminds of the Ibiza sounds of the mid 80s. This version is a club remix by Old Spice from Zielona Góra, one of the members of the band The Very Polish Cut Outs – a group which took it upon itself to revive forgotten Polish disco songs (or the ones which we don't want to remember?).
Anna Jurksztowicz – Hej man!
Disappointed by a date, Anna Jurksztowicz sings about it. To accompany her singing, she uses only a synthesiser and a drum set with the addition of a couple of cut-up vocal samples. The result is a surprisingly accomplished assembly of microsounds. Synthesisers were scoffed at throughout the 80s and 90s in Poland. Olga Drenda writes,
Polish dance music from the mid 90s was an intriguing hybrid of hi-nrg, eurodisco, rough techno-dance (called "dancefloor" by Bravo magazine) and neighbourhood music. It was too aggressive for fans of disco polo, too rudimentary for techno listeners, but it would probably interest Simon Reynolds [British music critic, expert in electronic music] as a local, more melodic, Slavic variety of happy hardcore.
Brutal – Sorrow
This disco polo band from the city of Suwałki exemplifies the strange musical hybrids that were made in Poland in the 90s. The composition and the vocalist's style give it the vibe of a party song but the drum machine gives it a heavy, aggressive, industrial feel that would qualify it as EBM (Electronic Body Music, an aggressive industrial type of dance music). We can hear constant noise, and some distortion. On the one hand, it's the embodiment of bad taste and exaggeration, but on the other, it's a historical testimony to the difficult years of transformation in suburban Suwałki and listening to it can be pleasurable. The music is so strange and undefinable that it becomes interesting and not only to be listened to ironically. Why would anyone like it? Konrad Jeliński, music journalist and DJ promoting suomisaundi music, answers,
"First of all, there's an attractive dissonance in disco polo which probably arises when joyful amateur musicians get help from professional producers. While admiring the exploits of the amateurs sucked into the mafia-governed production machine (it's a well-known fact that the mafia controlled a large part of the disco polo market), I feel as if they were not just enlisted but rounded-up, forced to perform; what they're doing looks like fun but their facial expressions say otherwise."
Boys – This Is Not The USA
Records and tapes with disco polo music took over the Polish phonographic market. Hundreds of thousands and even millions were sold. Disco polo concerts took place everywhere, at countryside fire stations and the elegant Congress Hall of the Palace of Culture in Warsaw where, until recently, official meetings of the communist party had taken place. Unleavened rhythms reverberated from TVs and radio stations, and records crowded the shelves of supermarkets. Disco polo singers even campaigned for Aleksander Kwaśniewski, who became President of Poland in 1995 (Ole, Olek! Na prezydenta tylko ty! was a song by Top One). According to newspapers, the mafia headed the Polish disco polo industry. A journalist from Wprost pointed to the prasko- ząbkowski gang, (commonly called Wołomin). In an article published in 2007 under the title ''Mafiopolo'', Rafał Pasztelański and Piotr Krysiak revealed that a man under the alias of Wariat (Crazy person), also known as the king of Polish amphetamine, had shares in companies that made money from disco polo. Marcin Miller, lead singer of the band Boys, said:
''Until the year 2000 we knew nothing about the criminals. I only realised who we worked for when I saw a gang arrested on TV, and then another one. That's when it dawned on me: "For Christ's sake, I was at a banquet with that guy, I had a drink with him".
To nie USA (This is not the USA) is a clip from 1995 and features two Soviet statues from the Palace of Culture. One represents a woman with a chisel, the other a man with a discobolus. They face Emilia Plater street and were made in the Lenin Communist Youth Union Ceramics Factory in Estonia.