It’s Happy Music

Polka lives on every Wednesday night at Kochanski’s Concertina Beer Hall on Milwaukee’s south side.

Accordion and concertina players collaborate with a drummer or a harmonica player to keep Wisconsin’s state dance alive at the polka open jam.

The musicians do not sign up for their time on stage like a typical open jam at a typical bar.  They take turns playing together and filling the beer hall with bright, happy polka music.

The concertina is an instrument similar to the accordion, with a squeeze box (or bellows) and buttons that create single notes or chords.  It is most often associated with polka or folk music.  Polka music is well-known in Wisconsin because of that state’s strong German and Polish heritage.  In 1993, that heritage was honored when Gov. Tommy Thompson made it the state’s official dance.

Milwaukeeans can practice the state dance on Wednesdays at Kochanski’s Concertina Beer Hall [www.beer-hall.com], owned by Andy Kochanski.  He bought it in 2007 from Art Altenburg, who opened the bar in 1980.

Kochanski said that along with having the most Polish beers you can find anywhere in Wisconsin, the bar is special because it “has a rich history of being the last polka bar in Milwaukee.”

Altenburg gave Kochanski a hard time when he first sold it to him and tried to prevent him from calling it a concertina beer hall, Kochanski said.  He wrote Kochanski a strongly-worded letter saying he had thirty days to remove the word “concertina” from the sign outside.  Kochanski refused, and posted the hand-written letter in the bar to mock Altenburg.

Saving polka

Kochanski has since made the bar his own.  He hangs multicolored Christmas lights in the windows year-round to make the 100-year-old building stand out from its residential neighbors.  During the holidays, he hangs an upside down Polish Christmas tree from the Polish tin ceiling, which is a regular sheet rock ceiling with the word “tin” spray-painted around randomly in silver paint.

“I’m half Polish, half German and I don’t mind taking jabs at my heritage, as far as the whole Polish jokes go,” Kochanski said.

Kochanski grew up with polka music when he would go to church festivals with his grandparents.  He said polka reminds him of his family and his past.

“Polka makes me happy…it makes me happy and it makes me sad at the same time,” he said.

A typical turnout on polka night can range from two musicians to 10.  On December 1^st, there were two drummers, three concertina players, and a harmonica player.

Kochanski’s musicians

One concertina player, Dominic Niemczyk, has been coming to the beer hall since it opened.

“They had so many musicians in 1980 that they never got a chance to play.  We had 20, 25, 30 musicians.  They all played the concertina.”

Niemczyk used to teach the concertina.  At one time, he had 16 students, but he said only about eight of them turned out “pretty good.”  One of his former students was at the beer hall that night, playing the concertina right next to him on stage, decades later.

John Klinkosh also comes to the beer hall on Wednesday nights to play his concertina.  He learned to play the instrument in his twenties.  He stopped playing for a while but got back into it in 1996.  He said he loves polka music but cannot pick a favorite polka song because “there are so many nice ones.”

As with Kochanski, polka reminds Klinkosh of his past.

“When I was young we use to dance and we used to belong to the young people’s club.  There was a band there that played a twenty minute polka and we used to dance to that.”

The polka open jam at Kochanski’s gives Klinkosh an outlet for his concertina music, but he said he benefits from it in other ways as well.

“I get a night out!  I don’t know…just to get out with the people and play, have fun and be with the other players.  And maybe exchange some thoughts, or whatever, about the music.”

Polka vs. Elvis

Polka music is not as popular in the United States now as it was 30 or 40 years ago.

Niemczyk said in the 1940s and 50s, there were thousands of young kids in Milwaukee who wanted to play the concertina or accordion.

“That went along until about 1960, when Elvis Presley came out with his guitar.  And then everybody went to the guitar and now they favor country-western music.”

Polka’s popularity may be declining, but Niemczyk said he will always love it.

“Some of our best times that we had was enjoying polka music.”