Brew Time Polkas

Hosted by John Cieplik, a.k.a. Brewster J. Cadbury

Polka radio lives or dies on the person behind the microphone. A playlist alone will not carry three hours; what carries it is somebody who knows which band recorded which arrangement, who remembers the hall it was cut in, and who can tell you why a particular version of a standard is the one worth hearing. Every show on this schedule is built that way — put together by hand, week after week, by people who have spent decades inside this music.

Brew Time Polkas is the loose, late-evening end of the schedule — a show built around the idea that polka is party music first and a heritage genre second. The pacing is quicker than the Sunday programmes, the talk is shorter, and the selection reaches happily into the novelty end of the catalogue that more serious shows tend to skip.

That is not a criticism. A great deal of this repertoire was written to be played in a hall with a bar at the back, and a show that remembers this serves the music better than one that treats every side as a museum piece. Bands that never got much respect from the purists get airtime here on the strength of whether the record still moves.

The Tuesday broadcast is the one to catch; the midweek and Saturday replays give it a second and third life for listeners in other time zones.

About the Music

Polka in North America is not one style but several, and the differences matter to the people who play it. The Chicago-honky sound leans on trumpets and a driving push beat; the Eastern style favours a fuller horn section and a smoother swing; the Cleveland-Slovenian tradition puts the button box at the centre and takes the tempo down a notch. Add the Polish-language repertoire, the crossover bands, and the younger groups mixing rock and jazz phrasing into a two-step, and a well-built show has more range than most listeners expect on the first hour.

Times shown are Eastern. Shows are pre-recorded unless a live broadcast is announced, and the schedule can move at short notice when a host is broadcasting from a festival or a hall. If a show you are following is not where you expect it, check the programming grid, which is kept as current as we can keep it.