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The oberek is a traditional dance beloved of state folk ensembles – but a new generation of musicians is reconfiguring its music into wild new forms, merging folk steps with electronics and the sound of Chicago footwork
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Music — Jakub Knera
It’s 6pm on the first day of OFF festival in Katowice, and a crowd is gathering in front of one of the stages to watch newcomers Tercet Imperial. Sporting disco outfits of nylon jackets, tracksuits and Chicago Bulls caps, keyboardist Piotr Zabrodzki deploys resonant acid melodies, while drummer Jan Emil Młynarski plays a rapid, irregular rhythm that brings to mind the scattergun beats of footwork, the ghetto-house subgenre that grew out of Chicago in the late 90s.
Not many of those jerking their limbs to the music in front of the stage are likely to realise that they are listening to a distinctly Polish sound: that of the oberek, a traditional dance in triple meter whose name derives from the Polish verb “to spin”, because it usually accompanies couples whirling across dancefloors in a circular motion.
“We play traditional music, but on different instruments,” says lead singer Joanna Sztucka. On Tercet Imperial’s debut album, Prymat, the melodies and lyrics of traditional songs are woven into contemporary production: violins and a snare drum are replaced by synthesisers and drum pads. “It’s is an attempt to create an alternative history,” Młynarski says. “We’re doing it primarily for people who know nothing about traditional music and don’t need to know anything at all.”
Tercet Imperial are part of a wider phenomenon. Far, far in Chicago. Footberk Suite , by drummer Gary Gwadera (real name: Piotr Gwadera), is a concept album about an imagined meeting of the oberek and Chicago footwork. Its genesis can be found in the influential footwork compilation Bangs & Works Vol 1 , released by Planet Mu in 2010, which was an inspiration to Gwadera. “I suddenly realised that grooves and this pulse of footwork were typical of the oberek, and that I wanted to combine them,” he says. To record it, he used dżaz, a minimalist percussion kit from the Polish countryside, along with a Roland TR-808 and electronic pads.
Musician Mateusz Kowalski offers a different take on this traditional music with his groups Radical Polish Ansambl, Tęgie Chłopy and Warszawska Orkiestra Sentymentalna. On his first solo album, released last year under the name Sam Kowalski, he replaced the violin with a gitalele (a small instrument combining the features of a classical guitar and a ukulele) and slowed the tempo, with no percussion – transforming the oberek’s nervous phrasing into a gentle, melancholic flow reminiscent of Appalachian folk music.
Elsewhere, Polish duo Opla first translated the tripartite rhythms and raw energy of the oberek to electric guitar and drums, and later to electronic pads, adding effects and looped guitar parts. Polish-French jazz quartet Lumpeks sound like Ornette Coleman on a prolonged ramble through the Polish countryside. Suferi, meanwhile, combines oberek rhythms with electrified violin, an effects-laden guitar, and a hip-hop groove on the drums.
Often, even a seasoned ear won’t immediately pick up on the traditional dance’s influences – and that’s precisely the point. As Kowalski explains, when releasing the self-titled album, he didn’t describe it as traditional music. “Rather, I wanted to say: listen without any preconceptions and see what this music does to you. The idea is for people to be surprised when they find out that this is traditional material,” he says.
The new interest in Polish tradition and its creative expressions stems from the turbulent history of rural music in Poland. Before the second world war, it was part of everyday life – weddings, celebrations and rituals – and passed down by ear. But war and migration disrupted the continuity of music across regions. During the communist era, a state-sanctioned version of folklore emerged, represented by the state song-and-dance ensembles Mazowsze and Śląsk. After the country’s political transformation in the 1990s, Poland’s own brand of popular dance music, disco polo, took over the social function of the old village band. Incorporating some traditional folk elements into the framework of Italo disco rhythms, it was meant to be accessible, cheap, and suitable for weddings.
Paradoxically, as the countryside moved away from traditional music, city dwellers began to seek it out again. The Dom Tańca social centre, established in Warsaw in the 1990s, played a key role in reviving traditional music. Young musicians sought out rural masters, recording and learning directly from them, while also reviving the tradition of village dances.
“For my generation, traditional music was initially something to be ashamed of. In fact, nobody in my circle knew anything about it,” says Gwadera. “I didn’t have the key to understanding that music, and I saw it as a bit of an embarrassment.”
Opla’s Hubert Zemler admits that he had listened to Hindu raga before he heard his first interesting oberek. “For a long time, I associated folk music with Mazowsze and the Śląsk ensemble – a centralised, sanitised view of tradition. Obereks have a ternary, danceable meter; they’re round dances, and people used to play them for hours on end. But they didn’t make their way into disco polo or pop. Why isn’t there any hip-hop in 3/4 time?”
Since 2020, this musical interest in the countryside has coincided with a broader “peasant turn” in Polish culture and the public debate. Books such as Adam Leszczyński’s A People’s History of Poland and Kacper Pobłocki’s Chamstwo, as well as the Netflix series 1670 (the recently released third season of which has been this year’s most popular Polish series) have shifted historical narratives away from royalty, nobility and the intelligentsia. They started debates about the peasant origins of most of Polish society: the experience of serfdom, the history of social mobility, the suppression of rural roots.
Nowadays, says Gwadera, traditional music is increasingly “treated as part of our own heritage and the forgotten history of the majority of society – it has become a response to the need for a sense of community”.
The oberek no longer needs to be a reference or a folkloric embellishment – it is becoming the language of modern creativity. Says Młynarski: “I’m convinced that if this old rural melodic tradition had survived and not been supplanted by disco polo and party music in the 1990s, people would still be playing it today – but on synthesisers and in tracksuits.”
• Tercet Imperial play Unsound festival in Kraków 8–11 October, Le Guess Who? in Utrecht 5–8 November and Unsound London 25–26 November 2026
Not many of those jerking their limbs to the music in front of the stage are likely to realise that they are listening to a distinctly Polish sound: that of the oberek, a traditional dance in triple meter whose name derives from the Polish verb “to spin”, because it usually accompanies couples whirling across dancefloors in a circular motion.
This report is published with credit to theguardian.com. Full available text from the wire is above. Read on theguardian.com →
Source: theguardian.com · Jakub Knera. Published 25 Aug 2026, 06:00 am.
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