Eastern European Immigrant Dances in America

Published November, 2013
by Easterndaze

The main idea of ’Eastern European Immigrant Dances in America’ was to mix music from so-called “east” (or better – “non-western music”) with electronic music, especially club music.

The first part is longer, and much broader from geographical point of view – from Caucasus through Warsaw and Moldova to Detroit and Atlantis (this island of Plato). There is a lot of accordeon, which I find, is an instrument uniquely associated with Middle and Eastern Europe, and in my mix you can hear some records of Polish and Ukrainian ensembles from America and music by Andrzej Krzanowski – a magnificent, but forgotten composer and accordionist. There’s also a lot of disco music – space disco jams from Kazakhstan, jazzy and sad song by Krystyna Prońko and italo hit by Danuta.

The second part is devoted to Peja, a rapper (kinda gangsta) from Poznań, one of the pioneers of hip-hop culture in Poland. The first song is about jeżyce – a bad district of Poznań (he compares it to Bronx) and second is a moving and quite gory love story. For me hip-hop, disco polo (disco mixed with folk music, quite nasty music, something like Yugoslav turbo folk maybe) and underground punk rock are the best historical sources to studies about political transformation from real socialism to brutal capitalism.

And there’s also a fragment of soundtrack from Psy by Władysław Pasikowski, the best crime movie from Poland, also about political transformation. But i don’t like to focus on one and only topic, most important for me are the immigrants, a some kind of metaphor of the 20th century, so there’s black metal inspired by Arabic music, a song by Alexander Robotnick about multiculturalism as well as Naftule Brandwein, a master of klezmer clarinet (in 1908 he emigrated to USA).

Various – The Widow’s Joy – Eastern European Immigrant Dances In America, 1925 – 1930

by Filip Lech