The fact that Chopin was Polish and spent the first half of his life in Poland, experiencing directly the music and dance from the village is indisociable with his own musical creations
The composer’s mother family backgroup was the Kuyavia region, that was one of the main Chopin’s leverages, together with the region of Mazovia in which he was born and with which its inhabitants’ character he felt identified and that, unsurprisingly, gives name to the mazurka music style. But during his years in Poland he travelled through most of the regions, where he payed attention to the popular music and dance manifestation. Their deep impression on this young fellow where well catched on his letters to his family, in example on the so-called Kuryerze Szafarskim, the Szafarnia courier, written during his holidays on the countryside. On these letters the composer explained his direct participation in several occasions. We took one little excerps from the very advisable CD-book The Sources of Chopin’s Music – Folk Music from the Archive of Polish Radio (Polskie Radio, 2013):
The leaps, the waltz, and the obertas began, but in order to encourage the farmhands, who where standing quitely and only jigging in place, I went to dance the first waltz with Miss Tekla and at the end with Mrs. Dziewanowska. Later on, everybody became so merry that they turned about the courtyard until they dropped. […] I begin to accompany on the bass […] sawing away on the one-string, monochord […] dusty, old basetla. […]