OOMPAH THIS, GRAMMY!
No 'One Last Dance'? Grammy Kills 'Polka' Category
By Crabby GolightlyIT'S AN AFFRONT TO POLKA LOVERS!
Apparently there's this organization called the Recording Academy that gets to decide what music is entitled to a Grammy award, and this year, they've nixed polka. Somebody muttered some sorry excuse about "musical landscapes," but that somebody obviously resides far from Chicago, home to the International Polka Association and a hotbed, so to speak, of polka music and dancing.
Here, the music still pulsates in Southside pubs and has even morphed into "polka punk", even if the crowds have grown smaller.
"What makes me somewhat upset about this is that the polka category was one of the few, if not only, music category in which all of the artists were essentially independent types putting out their own recordings,'' said Don Hedeker, guitarist and vocalist for the punk Polkaholics, who was looking forward to the day when he might win a Grammy.
On August 1, he and his band are releasing a new "polka opera," Wally, "loosely based on the life & times of Polka King Li'l Wally.
"I thought that we might have a shot to get nominated for a Grammy this year in polka. A long shot, admittedly, but I was definitely going to send it all over the place to try to make this happen,'' Hedeker said. "Now, it's impossible."
"Of course it's disappointing because this is what I do,'' said Eddie Blazonczyk Jr. of the polka band The Versatones. "The Grammy Awards gave a legitimacy to polka music.''
Blazonczyk's band was started by his father Ed Sr. in 1963, who actually claimed a Grammy for the album, Another Polka Celebration.
Junior joined the band just shy of 20 and assumed the lead in 1997. "When I joined my dad’s band we were doing 200 dates a year, we were on the road 40 to 45 weeks a year," he said.
But the crowds grew thinner as original fans aged, and their number of gigs declined. "They didn’t instill that love into their children,'' says Ed, who eventually entered the real work world and kept the band as a weekend hobby.
Yet at the very least, here in Chicago, the love of the music will live on, attracting fun-loving crowds to places like Club 505 and Rudy and Ann's. Independent-minded folks who don't look to the Grammy for their music cues.
"We try to be as un-boring and uncool as possible!,'' says Hedeker. "The traditional polka crowds are probably nostalgic to some extent -- certainly the glory days of polka are over for them, but the traditional bands continue to put out new music and try to attract new fans."
And Blazonczyk says no matter how small the crowds get, "I don’t think the music will ever die.
"It’s a fantastic art form. It’s America."
Comments
this sucks, but at least Sturr won't win any more grammys(tm)
Posted by: Gregoire | June 26, 2009 07:42 PM
The challenge, it seems now,
is for a polka album to win as best pop album.
Posted by: Jon Whitsell | June 12, 2009 11:48 PM
From the article it sounds like there are no polka shows that draw big crowds. The Polkaholics draw a 700 person sold out crowd every year for New Years Eve and have played the House of Blues and the Metro. So there is still an energetic following for this American art form.
Posted by: E.C. Wente | June 10, 2009 10:52 AM
Great article!
Thank you for the interview with Dandy Don.
We will just have to start our own damn awards ceremony!
Posted by: Jolly James | June 10, 2009 09:04 AM