Non-English Music in Portage County
As part of our PCHS feature exhibit, each month through December of 2026 we will share a new piece of music history. Be sure to come back to learn more about the music that makes Portage County so great!
Non-English Music in Portage County
There has been a variety of immigration waves in Portage County and the languages spoken here have inevitably made their way into our music. Before colonization there were many tribes that lived in the area, including the Ho-Chunk, Ojibwe, and Menominee. Their singing, often accompanied by drums, flutes, and shakers, was the earliest music shared here. Starting as early as the mid-1600s French fur traders and missionaries explored the Wisconsin River. The missionaries studied native languages and would do their best to translate hymns and prayers to teach to the converted. The missionaries did not have much success; they often required converts to follow Christianity completely and fully reject their traditional culture. The French fur traders and early explorers had greater success but settled near large waterways like the Great Lakes, less along the Wisconsin River. From the mid-1600s to the mid-1700s, French songs and hymns could have been heard in Portage County.
The French were not the only settlers exploring the Midwest, however. English explorers and missionaries were also arriving. The music that the English brought would have been primarily hymns and traveling songs. Back in Europe there was a rise in operatic and multi-part harmony singing, but we would not have heard that music in Portage County. Instruments took up precious room in traveling packs and could be bulky; they were rarely carried by early explorers. After a series of wars between the French and the British a treaty was signed in 1763 and France ceded their claims to the land east of the Mississippi. It was then, as the French retreated, that British settlers could truly enter the state. Throughout the 17 and 1800s Portage County was still immersed in the songs of the Menominee, Ho-Chunk, and Ojibwe, with the occasional English or French language thrown in. It took the War of 1812 for the British to leave Wisconsin, ceding it to the American government.
By the 1840s the lumber industry was flourishing in Wisconsin. Logs floated down the waterways and were processed at saw mills before being shipped to buyers in the east. The Wisconsin River was a key part of this industry due to the strong flow and wide riverbed. By this time in Germany, fiddles were being mass-produced and were a very popular instrument. German immigrants brought fiddles with them or ordered them once they arrived in North America. Logging camp songs and early folk tunes caught on at this time; logging camps were full of men who needed something to do through the winter nights. Lumberjacks also carved simple percussion instruments and flutes to accompany their songs.
It was the mid 1800s that saw the largest waves of immigration to Wisconsin and Portage County. The German immigrants were still arriving, and no longer were they just men heading to logging camps, but also families looking to settle. In 1858 Polonia was established in Portage County; this was the first sizable Polish settlement in Wisconsin. Polish immigrants were fleeing areas that were now under German control in Europe. Their traditional music incorporated pianos and violins, which they brought with them or purchased once they settled. Pianos and organs began appearing in schools, churches, and homes at this time. Polish immigrants also brought flutes, recorders, accordions, banjos, guitars, and brass instruments. Polka music, originally from Bohemia, was popular in Germany, Poland, Switzerland, and Austria. As immigrants from these countries settled in Wisconsin they each brought their regional variations of polka music and dancing. But it was not just the Polish and Germans who were settling in Portage County; we also saw Irish and Norwegian immigration. The Irish brought fiddles, concertinas, and accordions. The Norwegians brought fiddles, zithers, box dulcimers, flutes, and clarinets. When one family would settle, they would be the anchor for the next families who followed them. Whole villages emigrated together, and family units would follow each other across the ocean. Around Portage County we can use census data to see how different nationalities settled together. The variety of languages and music available at this time would have been dazzling.
Until the invention of the phonograph in 1877, music was a live event. The phonograph allowed communities to record songs and voices on wax cylinders, and these cylinders could be purchased, already recorded with songs or speeches. Holding only between 2 and 3 minutes of music, the cylinders changed the music industry and we began to see shorter songs meant for recordings. In the wake of the American Civil War, phonograph cylinders were used to record whistling, folk music, and marching tunes. In 1887 the gramophone was invented, using compressed discs of shellac instead of wax cylinders. We had gramophones in Portage County; they could only be used to play music, not record, and were much more user friendly. These shellac discs were known as “78s” because they were played at 78 revolutions per minute. At that speed they could hold one song on either side. 78s were the beginning of new languages and instruments being more widely heard. Russian, Spanish, French, Hawaiian, West African, Chinese, Japanese, Sioux, Navaho, and other languages were recorded on the 78s that were sold in Portage County. For many of our community this was the first time they heard these languages or the traditional instruments used in their songs. While in English, it is important to note that 78s were also the first disseminated recordings of “Negro spirituals” and “Southern songs” that included black voices. Portage County was, at that time, an almost completely white community, and would continue to be so until the 1980s. Music was a strong way that families here could connect to other cultures.
In the early 1900s radio was invented and by the 1920s broadcasting stations had popped up around the country. They allowed music to be aired to distant audiences for the first time, although the original broadcasting ranges were much smaller than what we see today. Gramophone discs were the easiest option for airing music unless the radio operator could get a live band inside his booth. This was the beginning of popular music; not only could gramophone records be sold across the country, but they could be played over the radio for listeners who couldn’t afford the records themselves. Opera and jazz music was a hit; violins, violas, and higher-pitched singing sounded tinny and faint on a 78 record, while brass instruments, pianos, and deeper voices really popped. This was one of the first times that African-American-created music was heard in Portage County and not associated with slavery.
In 1948 the first 33-RPM record was released by CBS broadcasting. Called a “long play” record, we know them as 33s or LPs. These records spawned a new era of popular music. They were a larger size than the gramophone’s 78s, made of more durable vinyl instead of brittle shellac, and could hold a full album’s worth of music on each side! After the end of WWII the entertainment industry was booming and these records became the industry standard. Promotional materials and single songs were released on smaller vinyl records which were dubbed 45s for their turntable speed. It was in this decade that rock and roll music became popular. LPs and 45s continued the tradition of 78s; there were recordings from around the world, with a variety of languages and instruments, but it was up to the radio stations to play them and up to individuals to purchase them. We do not know the rates that these recordings were purchased and listened to in Portage County. We know that our own home-grown bands played folk, blues, country, polka, and rock and roll.
Reel-to-reel magnetic tapes, cassette tapes, CDs, and finally the digital era of music all continued to globalize the Portage County community. In the 1980s Portage County was one location that took in Hmong refugees from the Vietnam War. Their own traditional instruments and language became the newest addition to our county in a century. While the University of Wisconsin - Stevens Point has been in town since 1898, the numbers of out-of-state and international students was critically small during the first 100 years of operation. Portage County was part of the whitest congressional district district in our country until the Hmong immigration began; while we have had access to the music of different cultures since at least the 1920s, it has truly been up to consumers to seek it out. Today one of the main ways to hear live music from other cultures is to visit the yearly Cultural Fair held at the Stevens Point Area High School, or to check the University of Wisconsin - Stevens Point performance schedule for new concerts. Portage County has a strong music scene that has allowed a wide variety of genres to prosper here; with such a young, growing community, will we be seeing more variety in language as well?
Thank you for reading this music history, presented together with the Portage County Historical Society's feature exhibit!
Be sure to check out the digital collection of local music history.
