Paraguayan polka, also known as Danza Paraguaya (Paraguayan dance), is a style of music created in Paraguay

Paraguay

Paraguay , officially the Republic of Paraguay , is a landlocked country in South America. It is bordered by Argentina to the south and southwest, Brazil to the east and northeast, and Bolivia to the northwest. Paraguay lies on both banks of the Paraguay River, which runs through the center of the...

 in the 19th century.

The Paraguayan polka is very different from the traditional polka

Polka

The polka is a Central European dance and also a genre of dance music familiar throughout Europe and the Americas. It originated in the middle of the 19th century in Bohemia...

, mainly because the Paraguayan version combines ternary and binary rhythm

Rhythm

Rhythm may be generally defined as a "movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions." This general meaning of regular recurrence or pattern in time may be applied to a wide variety of cyclical natural phenomena having a periodicity or...

s, whereas the European only uses binary. The juxtaposition of the mentioned rhythms gives the peculiar sound that characterizes this style. There are several variants of the Paraguayan polka such as polca syryry, polca kyre'y, polca popo, polca saraki, polca galopa, polca jekutu. All of them are slightly different because of the different influences and styles adopted by the composers in the early years of the Paraguayan polka.

The oldest polkas in Paraguay are from the early 19th century, such as Campamento Cerro León, Alfonso Loma, Mamá Cumanda, Che Lucero Aguai'y, Ndarekoi La Culpa and Carreta Guy.