Abstract
The Communist regime of the twentieth century co-opted Polish folk culture as part of its own ideology. "Both folk music and traditions were sanitized almost to irrelevance, emerging mainly through presentation by professional folk troupes … the overall effect was homogenization rather than local identity… . Nonetheless, there was just about enough slack in the system for local bands to keep some genuine tradition going." But the past twenty years have seen a resurgence of Polish roots music–called antifolk or hardcore folk. My research examines three groups that emerged in the 1990s groundswell of Polish folk music: Zakopower, Lao Che, and the Warsaw Village Band. My research explores the resurgence of Polish roots music by framing contemporary Polish musical practices as hybrid re-formations and redeployments of the folkloric that resist modernist notions of folklore, and demand a new scholarly approach to folklore and questions of ethnic identity. This article summarizes the trajectory of that larger research project.
