PARK FALLS/PHILLIPS — A lifelong accordion player has found a niche in performing for children as a way to continue the heritage of the polka along with inspiring reading.
Mike Schneider, of Clinton, in Rock County, brought his one-man “Pint-Sized Polka” performance with visual aids and comedy to introduce kids and families to “clean fun of polka music” at the Park Falls and Phillips public libraries on July 10.
Schneider said his show has really caught on and prior to Price County he had shows in Iowa, Wyoming and for the first time in California.
“Now I can officially call myself coast-to-coast,” Schneider said.
Park Falls Library Director Debra Hyde said she has been trying to book Scheider since 2018 and this the first time the schedules meshed. The show is a perfect fit with library programming goals with Schneider playing music, telling jokes and relating them both to books to incorporate a library theme into the act. The shows are entertaining but the kids are also learning something about the music of Wisconsin immigrants and how polka became the official music and dance of Wisconsin, she said.
“So many of our kids don’t know it and I just wanted to introduce it to them,” Hyde said. “So that maybe sometime down the road they hear it and they’ll think, ‘I know this. This is a part of me.”
At home it’s the TV, but the library is the “living room of the community,” where kids and families can have new and shared experiences, she said. Rural communities don’t get as many opportunities for such programming and so partnering with neighbor libraries helps.
Having the morning performance in Park Falls and the afternoon performance in Phillips provided convenience for family work schedules, said Rebecca Puhl, director of the Phillips Public Library.
“We are very excited to be able to bring someone like this in, and we have been working with the Park Falls Library more and more, and it seems to work out really well,” Puhl said.
With events like the Czech-Slovak Festival and Oktoberfest, it shows that the music is still very much alive in the Phillips community, she said. The music seems to be part of so many family and community gatherings.
From the librarian perspective, Puhl said it helps to know that music helps kids with everything from mathematics and as a healthy energy outlet with dancing and all the coordination and choreography of the dance routines for and the “Chicken Dance,” and the fun participation with “The Whoopee! Polka.”
As Schnieder said, the polka tempo matches the average heart rate of a child at around 120 beats per minute. There is some science to show there could be a physiological connection to the music.
“It keeps you happy and it does all this other stuff, and yeah, why not spend an afternoon dancing.” Puhl said. “Anything to get them away from the screens for a little bit, I suppose.”
One mother present, Rebecca {span}Trimner{/span}, said she appreciates polka as a former music teacher. She liked most that her two young daughters, Esther, 6, and Adlee, 3, enjoyed listening and participating in questions and answers and had fun trying to keep up with the choreography of the dances.
“It was interesting getting to see new instruments,” Rebecca said. “And it’s always fun for young kids.”
Between shows, Schneider spoke about how “Pint-Sized Polka” came to be.
His father was an accordion player and Schneider was pulling the instrument out of the closet before he was 2 years old..A photo of his father playing to him as a toddler is the cover of one of his CD recordings.
“He would play the accordion for me and kind of planted those early seeds,” Scheider said. “Then when I was 5, my parents took me to hear Frank Yankovic, who was America’s Polka King on the South side of Milwaukee. And from that day forward, that’s the day I decided I just had to play the accordion.”
Schneider turned professional in 1996 and played at dances or any place that needed a polka band. He noticed the positive reaction from kids who were watching him play and seemed to connect with the positiveness of the music.
“I never really thought much of it, in that I could do anything with it,” he said.
Then his wife, before they were married, told him about the music based children’s television shows and performers.. She immediately saw the opportunity to make a children’s polka CD.
“I sometimes tend to be a little closed-minded, but when I heard that, I thought, ‘oh, I have to do this,’” Schneider said.
As he played the polka belt communities such as Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Milwaukee and Chicago, Shneider said the sales of the CD were not going well, but his exposure on television interviews talking about the CD led to a request to play a children’s event at a library event in 2009. That quickly led to 10 similar bookings and he developed the children’s show.
“I put a program together and since that time I think I’ve done over 1,600 shows in 32 states,” Schneider said.
Schneider said the impetus is also part of his passion to preserve the history of polka music. He served on the Wisconsin Polka Hall of Fame Board that is no longer active and still works to carry on that legacy.
“I just never thought to myself that it would take this particular forum, where I’m actually in front of the youngest group,” Schneider said.
The passion has transformed into planning the program to educate kids about animals, trains, logging, farmers — the heritage of Wisconsin people. He performs in the spirit of the polka band to instill the joy and spirit of the music in kids who have “no preconceived notions, and are kind of a wide open canvas when it comes to new experiences and new music.”
“At least we are getting people more familiar again with the state dance and the state music,” Schneider said.
The traditional polka audience has aged to the point where the weekly dances at halls and taverns are gone. The demand for polka has become a “fun niche sort of music,” and has moved to the beer gardens of Milwaukee and northern Illinois, and annual Oktoberfest events.
The polka weddings are rare but families who still feel the importance of the tradition will have a polka band play at the start of a reception or rehearsal dinner rather than the entire event, he said.
“There is a little linkage to their musical roots or family roots present at the big occasion,” he said.
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