STA, 10 December 2021 - A Slovenian folk music ensemble called Štirje Kovači (Four Blacksmiths) from the northern Koroška region has made it into the Guinness Book of Records as the longest active polka music band in the world. The ensemble has been making music for nearly seven decades.
The band had been striving to get into the book for a year and a half and this week it finally received a certificate confirming its Guinness feat.
Štirje Kovači have been producing music and performing for 67 years without any breaks under the leadership of accordion player and singer-songwriter Franc Šegovc.
"We're very honoured to have got into the Guinness Book of Records. This feat is a culmination of 67 years of work, hard work," Hermina Šegovc, the wife of the bandleader, told the STA. She joined the ensemble as a singer in the early 1970s.
The band was formed in 1954 by four young boys who worked at an ironwork company in Slovenj Gradec. The ensemble, which still performs and appears on TV and radio, has seven members today. The track Kam Le Čas Beži (Where Does Time Go) is the band's best-known song.
Over the past seven decades, Štirje Kovači have recorded more than 40 albums and been performing in Slovenia and overseas, including for Slovenian communities in the US and Canada.
The band's achievements have been immortalised also by an exhibition at the Koroška Regional Museum which, Hermina Šegovc said, will soon display the ensemble's latest feat as well, its Guinness world record.
