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Horn Man
The Polish-American Musician in Twentieth-Century Detroit

Laurie A. Gomulka Palazzolo
Introduction by Dr. Thaddeus C. Radzilowski
Foreword by Dr. Ann Hetzel Gunkel 		Detroit and its strong Polish community share in America's rich history of Polish music and customs. Horn Man documents that history and details the development of the Polish-American musicians in Detroit who became known as "polka musicians," even though their music was remarkably diversified. The book reveals how the Polish musical customs and traditions developed around the liturgical calendar and how new Polish musical traditions were born in America and Detroit.
This regional study by the daughter of one of the prominent Polish-American bandleaders in Detroit discusses the rich tradition of the Polish wedding in Detroit and the evolution of the music that accompanied not just the Polish wedding, but all Polish-American events.
Horn Man, with its vivid pictures and narrative, brings honor and a renewed credibility to Detroit's legacy of Polish-American music and tradition.		 “The musical ‘Caesar's salad’ of twentieth-century Detroit became a cradle for the birth of a Polish-American musical culture, distinct from and yet honoring European Polish musical traditions. The musicians described in Horn Man embraced the gift of polka music from the Old World—which, ironically, gave it up almost completely —and preserved it for future generations of the New World. Inside Horn Man, the spirited music and poignant stories of these sons of Poland in Detroit are thankfully cherished and passed on.”
— Dr. Greg Adamus, son of Stanley Adamus, a pillar westside orchestra leader in Detroit during the Polka era
 
Published by American-Polish Music Society
Distributed by Wayne State University Press

$45.00s cloth / ISBN 0-8143-3192-0
$30.00l paper / ISBN 0-8143-3193-9

360 pages
187 halftones and 48 color illustrations

2003

A two-CD set "American-Polish Music from Detroit" is available at hornman-detroit.com