Plainsong and Hotel Lavatory Music

Yesterday I went to Church in the evening as I usually do during Lent. Mass starts at 6 p.m., but from 5.15, there is a service of Exposition, prayers, and hymns, called Gorzkie Żale (Bitter Reproaches).   

The tradition dates to the 18th century in the Warsaw's Holy Cross Church and from there it spread to the whole of Poland. There are five parts: "Pobudka" (Wake-up call), "Żal duszę ściska" (Sadness grips the soul), "Lament duszy" (Cry of the soul), "Smutna rozmowa" (Sad conversation); and the last part, "Któryś za nas cierpiał rany" (You Who suffered wounds for us). (Wikipedia, with my emendations)

I shall try to find or produce a translation. The music is akin to plainchant, but with a slightly Słowenic sound, and can be heard here. 

The service ends with Tantum Ergo, in Polish, as can be heard here. The young organist in the video is well wrapped-up, with gloved hands: most Polish Churches are unheated, and the temperature in them in winter is usually well below zero, with the Holy Water frozen solid. You have to scratch at it with your finger nails.

After Gorzkie Żale, at 6 o'clock, Mass started. The music was not plainsong, nor was it rock or folk, but a repulsive combination of 1950s night-club Latin American rhumba or cha-cha-cha and skiffle, complete with bongo drums, and heavily strummed three-cord guitar accompaniment. 

I was overcome by aural outrage. The music, as music, was bad. It did not belong to any tradition, either Polish, American, church, or secular. It was the kind of garbage heard in hotel lavatories, or airports, or shopping malls.

Why is it played? Whom is it supposed to attract or please, apart from the not very competent musicians who play it? What has it to do with the Sacrifice of the Mass?

How I miss Low Mass: fast, but reverent.