Pete Dunda has played accordion in a polka band for 80 years. He grew up in a Slovenian family with an accordion and learned his first five or six songs at age 5. But his lessons focused on classical music, and he didn’t learn to play polka until he was about 13.
“And then I started sitting in with polka bands in Pueblo,” Dunda recalled. “I was fortunate enough to get associated with Crested Butte.”
In the early 1980s, Dunda started playing with Chris Rouse, a Crested Butte native, which led him to the town. They played together at the iconic Talk of the Town to keep polka music alive, despite its waning popularity.
“We need to get the young people more involved,” Dunda emphasized.
Dunda explained that polka music’s highlight was in the late 1950s, but then, rock and roll hit.
“And then everybody wanted to play a guitar, not an accordion. And Elvis and all the rest of them rock and rollers took the limelight,” Dunda said. “That's where the young folks went.”
In Crested Butte, polka music helped unite Central European miners who immigrated to the U.S. to work in the mines. As an international language, music kept them connected to their cultural roots.
“And that gave them a place to hang their hat, so to speak. A lot of them couldn't speak English, and they certainly couldn't understand each other's languages,” Dunda explained. “It was quite heavy in Slovenian, Croatian, Italian, and some German. And the music was what gave them their recreation, and the instrument was the accordion.”
Polka music was popular in Crested Butte from the late 1920s to 1952, when the mine was closed. Dunda says that every Friday at the Almont Pavilion there was a dance with various bands supplying the music.
“In the old days, anybody that had an instrument—you could be sitting having a beer or a meal, and if somebody had an accordion, they would start it right there, and there'd be dancing right on the spot,” recalled Dunda. “We lack that nowadays… There used to be two to three dances a week, and now we have three official polka dances a year.”
Dunda continues to try to keep the tradition alive.
“That's what brought the different ethnic groups together to relax, share their common food, and have a good time after a hard day's work,” Dunda said. “We'll keep the tradition going as long as we can.”
That story is part of a Rocky Mountain Community Radio project marking Colorado’s 150th year of statehood and the United States' 250th birthday.
Rocky Mountain Community Radio is a network of public media stations in Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, and New Mexico, including Aspen Public Radio.
Copyright 2026 KBUT.
