In an article, I would like to present the mechanism for the politization of folklore, reaching for European examples. What interests me the most in this context is the idiom of traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. Then I will draw up contemporary strategies of manipulating tradition. Case study will be for me the movement of dance houses in Hungary and Poland. I decided to compare these two cases, because Polish dance houses are genetically and ideologically - which I will try to prove - related to the Hungarian ones. The analysis presented is based on the method of participant observation (Budapest, Poznań) and interviews with Polish dance house activists.