Happy Note's Art Form

Artist's Art Form

Happy Notes’
Art Form

Polish-style Polka Band
Stevens Point, WI

Norm Drombrowski. Photo by Andy Kraushaar. The Happy Notes is a band that plays honky style polka, a type of Polish-American music. The Happy Notes usually have five to seven instruments. Joe Dombrowski plays trumpet, sometimes joined by Ken Camlek. Mark Dombrowski plays saxophone or clarinet and his sister Marie Kubowski plays concertina. Marie takes up the violin for old-style Polish fiddling for certain tunes. Sometimes brother Jon Dombrowski joins in on accordion. Those are the melodic instruments in the Happy Notes.


Video Clip of Happy Notes

Norm Dombrowski provides the rhythm on his drum set and Joe Larson plays electric bass guitar. In the old days the Happy Notes’ bass was a bass violin like the type played in an orchestra.

Norm does a lot of the singing. He sets up a microphone so that he can sing and drum at the same time. Mark and Joe Dombrowski take a break from playing their horns to sing also. They perform some songs in Polish, others in English and some in both languages.

The wind instruments are very loud, so the trumpet and reed players usually stop playing when the singer takes the lead or the concertina player takes a solo.

The Happy Notes work out an arrangement for each of the songs they play. They rehearse to decide when they’ll have vocals and when they’ll have instrumental parts in the song. They also decide how many and which instruments will take the lead in a particular part of the tune.

Wisconsin Folks

For Educators:

To Hire
Happy Notes

Curriculum
Standards

Resources/
Credits