Stiftungsfest is billed as Minnesota’s oldest celebration, this year celebrating 165 years in Norwood Young America. Stiftungsfest means “Founders Day Celebration” in German. And what could be more German than Diedesfelder VolXmusik and Kris and the Riverbend Dutchmen?
Both were among the German music headliners in the Big Musik Tent at Stiftungsfest this past weekend.
Diedesfelder VolXmusik is a 14-member instrumental ensemble from Germany that specializes in authentic German folk music (Volksmusik): Bohemian and Moravian polkas, waltzes, and traditional marches. The band is based out of Diedesfeld, Germany.
Stiftungsfest organizers note that group has made regular concert tours to Norwood Young America and that residents often host the German musicians. Some folks from the community also have made trips to Diedensfeld, a kind of sister city to NYA.
For at least one of the visiting ensemble members, it was her first visit to the United States, and she and companions were headed on a sightseeing trip from NYA to Chicago, which has its own large German and Polish population and descendants.
Meanwhile, Kris and the Riverbend Dutchmen preserve the music of those immigrant populations, like polka and other old time dance music. Polka started in Bohemia in the 1830s but quickly spread to Austria, Germany and “across the pond” to the United States, notes Kris Keltgen, band lead on concertina and vocals.
The Riverbend Dutchmen, out of Mankato, Minn., echo groups like Whoopee John Wilfahrt and his orchestra, who were pioneers of early recorded Minnesota/Midwestern old-time dance music, selling hundreds of thousands of records in the 1920s through the 1950s. Also, the Six Fat Dutchmen, famous for its traditional “Dutchman-style,” German-influenced oompah polka music, originating out of Minnesota.
At least one member of the Riverbend Dutchmen played with that group, while others, including a couple Minnesota Music Hall of Fame musicians, hail from other Minnesota German-Bohemian communities like Cologne, Chaska, New Ulm and Montgomery. And many say they grew up with that kind of music.
Kris and the Riverbend Dutchmen are part of a shrinking circle of large Dutchmen-style bands that used to perform in ballrooms across the Midwest. Many of those ballrooms are gone now, but polka and old-time music still have a dedicated niche of listeners in the ballrooms that remain, county fairs and events like Stiftungsfest.