BETHEL - It's an accordion-fronted surf band. Its members play ethnic instrumentals and EX-treme polkas. The group, better known as The Serfs, will perform at 7 p.m. Thursday, April 5, in Bingham Hall, as part of the Performing Arts Series at Gould Academy

The '60s rock 'n' roll band plays a style of music might be called ethnic, surf-rock with a twist. The Serfs call it global groove.

In 1989, Gary Sredzienski was hired to be the strolling accordion player during a Polish wedding dinner. The dance band, The Beach Cowboys, was a rockabilly and surf band from the Portsmouth, N.H, area. Sredzienski got up on stage and played a few songs with the band, and they've been playing together ever since as The Serfs.

Around Durham and the Seacoast, people know Sredzienski as "The Polka Guy" because of his radio show "Polka Party," which airs on WUNH-FM. But the show is only a small part of who he is and what he does. Sredzienski is a full-time accordionist with a forestry degree, who left the field years ago to start The Serfs, with four compact discs on his own Bellows Music label and a gig at the Smithsonian on his resume.

Burt Feintuch, professor of folklore and English and director of the Center for the Humanities at UNH, described Sredzienski as an "accordion warrior" when he introduced him at the 1999 Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington, D.C.

"Gary is a crusader for older forms of music that aren't well known in this region, and he has such a strong commitment to those forms and such a compelling physical presence, especially when he is performing, that I thought 'warrior' was appropriate," Feintuch said in a prepared statement.

Sredzienski and his bandmates have created a new and original sound, fusing old world musical traditions and compositions of the accordion warrior with a modern rock twist. Besides Sredzienski, band members are Jamie DeCato on drums, Chris DeCato on guitar and Jim Taylor on bass guitar.

Tickets are $6 adults, $4 for students. For more information, call 824-3575.