29 September 2026 – Polky Put Polish Folk Music Through Toronto on New Album MOTHER TONGUE

Toronto's Polish feminist alt-folk group Polky celebrate the release of MOTHER TONGUE today with an album-launch performance at DROM Taberna, bringing an unusually physical mixture of Eastern European traditional music and contemporary Canadian energy with them. Led by Canadian Folk Music Award-winning singer Ewelina Ferenc, Polky combine powerful traditional vocals, fiery fiddle playing, bass and drums with the suka from Biłgoraj, a rare Polish bowed instrument that makes the average indie band's battered Jazzmaster suddenly look rather commonplace.

MOTHER TONGUE is sung across Polish, Ukrainian and English and examines language, migration, motherhood and the cultural baggage people carry when they build lives far from where their families began. That makes Toronto an important part of the record rather than simply the place where it was recorded. The group's music treats folk tradition as living material instead of something that needs to be kept behind museum glass, allowing heavy grooves and contemporary arrangements to sit beside centuries-old musical vocabulary.

Tonight's launch appropriately adds dancing, special guests and Eastern European food to the equation. Folk music has always travelled by being carried from one community to another; Polky simply happen to be doing it with microphones, amplifiers and a Toronto postal code. MOTHER TONGUE sounds like heritage refusing to stand still.