Less rough around the edges these days, disco polo is a booming business and its stars are living a life of luxury. This clearly worked the trick for Aleksander Kwaśniewski, who defeated the incumbent Lech Wałęsa to become president in 1995, in no small part thanks to this piece:Īt the turn of the century disco polo went on a blood-curdling rollercoaster ride, going out of style overnight before bouncing back in style a few years later.
A mainstream TV network was airing a weekly show on this latest thing in music, disco polo clubs were opening by the dozen and there were no limits to what you could be seen wearing:ĭuring disco polo’s heyday in the mid-1990s, it was embraced by politicians, who stood little chance of winning elections if they didn’t get a popular disco polo band to sing about what fine chaps they were. Sales soon shot through the bazaar roof and the genre was given a more attractive-sounding name, calqued half-heartedly from Italo disco. Conceived in the late 1980s, the genre was initially known as sidewalk music because cassettes were sold primarily in stalls on streets and in bazaars. The beginnings of disco polo were far less refined though, at least production-wise. This hasn’t, however, prevented disco polo from becoming a crowd favourite at wedding parties all across Poland, with popular hits typically sung by the entire dance floor at the top of their voices.įor starters, let’s give it over to Zenek Martyniuk, the undisputed king of disco polo, and his band’s hit single Przez Twe Oczy Zielone ( Because of Your Green Eyes), viewed nearly 200 million times to date on YouTube: When it’s not melodramatic lines about unrequited love, the lyrics feature the sort of locker-room language that doesn’t really lend itself to quoting here. While it continues to mystify musicologists and remains a symbol of bad taste for many, disco polo happily defies all the odds with its earwormy melodic line and remains many a Pole’s guilty pleasure. Think of disco polo in terms of a cross between disco and folk music, just not a very good cross. A year later, as a result of a community bottom-up initiative, he got portrayed in one of the murals in Białystok.An ear-bleeding mixture of simplistic melodies and lovey-dovey lyrics, disco polo has become a fixture at parties across Poland and a source of sizeable fortunes for its biggest stars. In recognition of his merit in promoting the Podlaskie, Zenon Martyniuk received in 2018 the Honorary Ambassador of Podlaskie Award. Despite performing on the greatest of stages or on TV shows, he always comes back to his home region. Zenon Martyniuk is proud of his roots and emphasizes his links with Podlaskie. He was a pioneer of “disco polo” back in 1980s, and, unlike many other stars of that time, he is still active, releasing new albums, giving concerts and breaking records of popularity on YouTube. Martyniuk is an unquestioned king of the “disco polo” genre and a famous star widely recognised even among fans of other types of music. Thanks to that he can sing in several languages, including Belarusian (he used to win Belarusian song contests as a child), Russian and Roma. Zenon grew up in a multicultural region, with people of many different descents living together. Music was a part of his life since early childhood – his first music teachers were his uncles, who used to play at barn dances. Zenon Martyniuk comes from a small village of Gredele.