The 42nd annual Cedar Polka Fest may still be four months out, but organizers are already gearing up for what they say could be the biggest year yet for the beloved Leelanau County tradition. Though declining attendance throughout the 2000s and 2010s had once raised questions about the festival’s longevity, a post-pandemic popularity bump has made the event bigger than ever. Lisa Rossi-Brett, executive director of the Cedar Polka Fest Foundation, expects 2024 will continue the trend.

As Rossi-Brett tells the story, the Cedar Polka Fest began informally in 1975 when “a group of local people got together and wanted to have a polka party.” It quickly turned into Leelanau’s version of Woodstock, a rambunctious and heavily-attended celebration that also went a bit off the rails.

“It was held on the street in Cedar, it was a one-day event, and they couldn’t get a liquor license,” Rossi-Brett says of the inaugural Polka Fest. “And since they couldn’t actually sell alcohol, what they did instead was they sold you a cup and then refilled it free all weekend. As you can imagine, it was very well attended – and it was wildly out of control.”

The debaucherous stories of that first year are the stuff of local legend. “I’m told there were people parked all the way up to M-72, and farmers were bringing them into town on wagons,” Rossi-Brett say. “By the time the festival was done, every store within a 10-mile radius had sold out of beer. It was just chaos.”

For its first three years, the Cedar Polka Fest stuck to that all-out street party model. It also quickly wore out its welcome among locals: Rossi-Brett says she is “still fighting the stigma” from the '70s version of the Polka Fest. “I still hear people talking about [the first three years] and telling stories like, ‘People were drunk all over, they were sleeping on my lawn,’” she tells the Leelanau Ticker. That’s the image that’s stuck in their minds, but that hasn’t happened in over 40 years.

Instead, Rossi-Brett says the Cedar Polka Fest transformed after 1977, with organizers deciding “they had to reground and figure out how to do this event in a way that was sustainable.” The new era kicked off in 1982, with the festival trading its street-party roots for its current home beneath a tent at the Cedar tennis courts. It was one of several steps organizers took to make the festival more family-friendly, more community-focused, and more legitimate.

“The people that were having this party – who were basically just some Polish guys that lived in Cedar – they realized they were making a lot of money, and decided they needed to form some kind of an organization to legitimize it,” Rossi-Brett says. “And that’s how the Cedar Chamber of Commerce was born.”

Since then, Rossi-Brett estimates that the Cedar Chamber of Commerce has poured “over $350,000 into the parks in Cedar” and provided significant funding for local Little League baseball, the “Light Up Cedar” Christmastime event, annual scholarships, Cedar firefighters, and more. “All that money comes from the Cedar Polka Fest,” she notes. “It’s become this huge fundraiser for Cedar as a whole, generally infusing over $50,000 per year back into local charitable organizations and nonprofits.” The event’s charitable impact is particularly healthy these days, in the wake of three consecutive big-growth years.

“When I came aboard in 2019, our numbers had dwindled and we were in pretty dire straits,” Rossi-Brett recalls, blaming the dipping attendance on scheduling. “Historically, the event had always been the last weekend in June – not a great time in my mind, because we were competing with the National Cherry Festival.”

In 2021, the Polka Fest landed on a new date – the third weekend in August – and attendance skyrocketed. “Our numbers in 2021 were up 30 percent overall, compared to 2019,” Rossi-Brett says. “Then 2022 had about a 20 percent growth from 2021, and we saw another 20 percent growth last year. So, we’re steadily growing, and the feedback has been absolutely amazing.”

Beyond the date change, Rossi-Brett credits a series of new events with helping draw more people to the Polka Fest. While the heart of the festival is still a celebration of the area’s deep-rooted Polish culture – in the form of live polka music and authentic Polish food – Rossi-Brett says recent additions like a car show, a pancake breakfast, a foot race, a craft fair, a junior royalty program (a la the Cherry Festival) and a corn hole tournament have all widened the demographic appeal of the festival.

This year will see another new addition: “The Dog Days of Summer,” a canine-focused program that will feature dock jumping courtesy of Ultimate Air Dogs, a costume contest called the “Polish Pooch Pageant & Mutt Strut,” and on-site doggy daycare offered by the Great Lakes Humane Society.

“One thing we realized is that we always have a lot of people show up to the festival with their dogs, but you can’t bring a dog under our tent,” Rossi-Brett explains. “We have food in there, and the health department would shut us down if we allowed animals. And there’s 2,000 to 4,000 people under the tent at any given time, too, and loud music going. It’s just not a good place to have an animal. So, we’re adding all these dog events to appeal to those attendees who do bring their dogs down to the festival.”

Rossi-Brett expects the new events, combined with growing media attention outside of Michigan, will lead to another record year for the Cedar Polka Fest.

“I got a call last week from a polka TV show from Wisconsin, and they want to cover us,” she says. “So, I am definitely expecting that our numbers will grow again this year.”

The 42nd Cedar Polka Fest is scheduled for August 22-25. A full calendar of events is now available on the festival’s official website.

Photo credit John Konkal Photography.