My knee-jerk initial reaction to the news that the Recording Academy had eliminated Best Polka Album from its Grammy Awards categories was rage against the machine.
It wasn’t the first time.
As a voting member of the Academy (you have to have at least six album credits to be a voter, mine being CD liner notes), I served two terms on the New York Chapter’s Board of Governors several years back, and was regularly incensed by the regular put-down of polka—or what us afficionados call “that happy, snappy music”–by the prejudiced music business professionals who also made up the board. It was the height of Eminem: I wasn’t a fan, but everyone else on the board—some of whom were top producers—loved his records. No one besides me saw any problem with his lyrics.
Yet this cream of New York’s record business, elected to guide the association behind the Grammys—according to grammy.com “the only peer-presented award to honor artistic achievement, technical proficiency and overall excellence in the recording industry, without regard to album sales or chart position”—frequently saw fit to gratuitously ridicule one of its constituent genres. Some members of the board even then lobbied to have the polka Grammy category eliminated.
Typically, I didn’t sit still. Much to the chagrin of the rest of the board, I always stood up for polka and voiced my disapproval of any polka put-downs by fellow governors during board meetings, and when the president of the board got into the act, I wrote him a highly personal letter essentially accusing him of racism.
“I was extremely hurt and distressed at the way you and a good number–if not the majority–of the board denigrated the heritage music of millions of us ethnic European-Americans at Tuesday’s meeting,” I wrote. “This is hardly the first time that board members have singled out polka music for mockery and condemnation, but I do not recall you ever leading the charge. I have been assured by another member of the board that you were joking in your comment that you were personally going to see that polka was eliminated as a Grammy category, but if you were, I want you to know that it didn’t seem that way to me–or to another board member whom I’ve also contacted to make sure that I’m not being overly sensitive. If it was a joke, it wasn’t very funny, especially considering, again, that a number of clearly elitist snobs on the board, if not a majority, would also love to get rid of polka.”
I’m editing this slightly both to protect the guilty and to save you some of my own self-serving shit. But there remains some good, basic polka information here for the uninitiated, and I’m just too lazy to rewrite it. And sadly, my cause for protest still rings true today.
“If it was not a joke,” I continued, “then you need to know something about those of us who prize polka and our proud heritage. I’m presuming you’ve never read any of the many articles I’ve written about polka in Billboard and elsewhere, or the many polka album liner notes I’ve written. So I’ll give you the first three paragraphs from a recent piece I was asked to write for Rhythm Music magazine:
‘Face it: No other music genre gets dissed like polka.
‘Say the word and people think Lawrence Welk, beer barrels, tubas, oom-pah, fat Dutchmen with fat accordions, fat women dancing. You’re probably laughing now just thinking about it.
‘Not that you’d be wrong, you’d just be selling it short. Way short. For if there’s one music that deserves to be called world music, it’s polka. There’s Polish polka, of course, but there’s also German, Slovenian, Czech, Tex-Mex. There’s even Native American polka: It’s called waila, which derives from the Spanish word for dance, though it’s also known as “chicken scratch,” because of its sound and the look of its dancers. It’s played best by the Southern Arizona Tohono O’odham tribe–who picked up accordions, polka, and other European dance forms from the Germanic settlers of Tucson in 1870–and includes such renowned chicken scratchers as Southern Scratch, the Joaquin Brothers, Papago Raiders, and the Molinas.’
“Let me add here that polka is also a populist, working class music, much like rock ‘n roll once was, and like rock ‘n roll once was, it’s easy pickings for music establishment elitists. I never would have figured you to be one of them, indeed, as president of the New York chapter of an organization that purports to promote all kinds of music and musicians, you are the last person who should be voicing objections to any kind of music, whatever your own prejudices. And if you or anyone else wants to pick on polka, is gospel next? Bluegrass? Blues? Folk music? What about Latin, r&b, rap, country, classical, and any other genre of music not deemed mainstream by the woefully inadequate Grammy TV powers–and establishment New York chapter board members?
“Hey! I don’t particularly care for a lot of the music–if not the bulk of it–that gets recognized by the Grammys. But I surely recognize that others do, and that that’s enough for it to be valid. Indeed, that’s the beauty of the music business–that everyone can be a critic as well as a fan, and that if it’s good, it’s good no matter what genre–or what anyone else says.
“As for polka, I am at least as proud of my membership in the International Polka Association as I am of my membership in [the Recording Academy]–if not more so.”
I made note of my Milwaukee, Wisconsin, hometown (where the late, great Frank Yankovic was crowned Polka King) and said that despite my lack of higher education (not to mention middle education) and lowly freelance music journalist stature compared to the mainly big-time income/expense account corporate types making up the rest of the board, I’d stack my taste, credentials, reputation, ability, and support for all kinds of music up against anyone’s. “I abhor political correctness and most certainly can take a joke–so long as it’s a joke,” I declared. “Indeed, polka people laugh at themselves harder than anyone. But we’re a proud people, who understandably chafe at the scorn heaped on us by those who may tower above us in social class, but haven’t half the heart.”
Here I saluted the record man—to use an archaic music business term conveying the highest respect—with the biggest heart of all, Steve Popovich. The founder of Cleveland International Records, Steve discovered Meat Loaf, and put out “Bat Out Of Hell,” one of the biggest rock albums of all time. In various major label positions he was also responsible for signing such diverse artists as Michael Jackson, Ted Nugent, Charlie Daniels, REO Speedwagon, Johnny Cash, Boston, Cheap Trick, Kris Kristofferson, Southside Johnny, Sly & The Family Stone–and Frank Yankovic. One of the most important boosters of polka music, he had just put out a pair of incredible polka compilations, both entitled “Here Come The Polka Heroes” (and both including my liner notes). The discs featured the great polka artists including Chicago “push”-style Polish polka ace Eddie Blazonczyk’s Versatones (whom I brought to Central Park SummerStage the preceding year after three years of hounding the producers), Texas progressive polka-rock band Brave Combo (whose leader Carl Finch was in the process of compiling a polka anthology for Time-Life), and Yankovic.
“I’d be happy to have Steve send you these albums and others,” I blathered on—casting away all remnants of self-promotional constraint: “I’d also be happy to take you along with me to my favorite concert venue, the Bay Way Polish Home in Elizabeth, New Jersey, where my friend Jimmy Sturr, for whom I wrote liner notes on his Grammy-winning ‘Living On Polka Time,’ is playing on May 1. In case you don’t know, Jimmy has sold hundreds of thousands of records, has sold out Carnegie Hall seven times and Lincoln Center four times, and is the highest-rated guest artist on TNN’s ‘Prime Time Country’ program, drawing more fan mail than even Garth Brooks.”
Finally, I concluded with a threat and a promise: “I’ll understand if you’re not interested, but I also want you to understand that I won’t sit still the next time you or anyone else on the board sees fit to maliciously slight any kind of music that I like–or any kind I dislike.”
Steve Popovich. I’d seen Frankie Yankovic at a Milwaukee Summerfest some 30 years ago (I have an “I’m a Frankie Fan” button picturing him with an accordion lying around somewhere) but it was only when Steve handed me a copy of Eddie Blazonczyk & the Versatones “25th Anniversary Album” from 1988 that I realized the stylistic breadth of polka. And after I convinced the SummerStage people to book the Versatones, Steve spontaneously got on stage during their set and offered $50 to the best dancers.
(My late friend Dave Nives was there, too. The last of the great record men, he’d worked in all areas of the business at one time or another, and knew indie music and especially vintage country and r&b better than anyone. He was then doing a&r over at Koch, and I had Steve send him a Blazonczyk record–which Dave rightly recognized as “real rock ‘n’ roll” [under the name Eddie Bell, incidentally, Eddie B (as he's known in the polka world) had toured with the likes of Buddy Holly, Gene Vincent and Brenda Lee during an early rock ‘n’ roll recording phase]. He wanted to sign the Versatones, but his superiors, as is the case so often with superiors, just didn’t get it.)
“Who needs the Grammy category?” Steve said when I called him to commiserate. He brought up the Versatones’ annual “Polka Fireworks” festival on July 4 in Seven Springs Resort in Champion, Pa. (this year’s five-day fest will be the 35th, with thousands of polka fans in attendance to see 18 of the country’s top polka bands), which he took me to when I was doing the Billboard piece (I’ll never forget seeing Henny & the Versa J’s, featuring young Ryan Ogrodny, who couldn’t have been more than 10, singing “If I Could Be Like You” with his hero and mine, Eddie B—whom the song was about! And I’ll never forget the floor actually shaking from thousands of dancers hopping simultaneously.)
“Each weekend tens of thousands of people dance to polka at city festivals in the Midwest,” Steve continued. “To them, polka is more than a category—it’s their lives.”
Polka people, Steve noted, fought all of America’s wars.
“Frank Yankovic fought in the Battle of the Bulge and they wanted to amputate his hands when he got frostbite,” he recounted. “Then they put an accordion in his hands and [the use of his fingers] magically came back! [Fellow legendary Slovenian polka bandleader and former Yankovic bandmate] Johnny Pecon was a Seabee. These people built our country! Tens of millions of Eastern Europeans.”
Anyway, Steve, concluded, “polka deserves underground status. It’s not commercial shlock music made for TV, but serious music that stays with serious people their whole lives. And Brave Combo is the hippest band in the world the last 30 years!”
None hipper, that’s for sure. The two-time polka Grammy-winning band’s Finch told the New York Times that the elimination of the polka Grammy category was “devastating.”
“Polka is so misunderstood, you know, the butt of jokes,” he said. “Having a polka category was the most important step to legitimacy that we could ever hope to achieve. To have that taken away, it’s like it was all for nothing.”
The polka Grammy was purged to ensure that the Awards process “is pertinent within the current musical landscape,” said Recording Academy president/CEO Neil Portnow in a prepared statement. He further declared the goal of “keeping the Recording Academy a relevant and responsive organization in our dynamic music community”—altogether indicating, of course, that polka is now considered neither pertinent nor relevant.
I called the Recording Academy and spoke with its vice president of awards Bill Freimuth.
“We certainly hope that this isn’t viewed as the end of Grammy Award participation for polka artists, because that’s certainly not our intention,” he said, then explained the Academy’s action. “We have a very formal awards and nominations committee made up of 35 to 40 professionals who meet once a year for two days to go over proposals for adding and changing categories and anything else that’s awards-related. There’s a standing, mandated procedure to review categories with low numbers of entries, and polka had fallen below the threshold.”
The first polka Grammy was awarded in 1985 to “America’s Polka King” himself, Frank Yankovic, for his album “70 Years of Hits”—which Steve originally released on Cleveland International. Since then the category has been dominated by “Eastern big band”polka stylist Jimmy Sturr, the only polka artist signed to anything other than a tiny independent label (he’s with Rounder), who has won 18 polka Grammys–one fewer than Bruce Springsteen, as the Times piece noted. He’s easily the genre’s biggest star in terms of sales and name recognition.
“We noticed a few years ago that after some 20 years, polka, which had been really healthy, had a low number of [album award] entries,” Freimuth continued. “So we said, ‘Let’s give it another chance’ with the hope that entries would rise again, and they did come up a little over the next couple years, but then declined again.”
The current guidelines dictate that any Grammy category that falls to 25 or fewer album submissions is subject to scrutiny of its “viability” as a category, said Freimuth. “Polka did that this year, and the committee said it didn’t feel right to be giving one Grammy per every 262 entries in the rock field–and one for every 23 in the polka field. It was an equity issue, so they decided it was best at this point to eliminate the category.”
I’d suggest an equity issue, too, in comparing the relatively immense rock field with polka, but then again, rules are rules, and if polka doesn’t meet them, well, that’s not necessarily the Academy’s fault. Or is it?
“When the polka category was established, it acknowledged our music and put us on the map,” said Ed Blazonczyk, Eddie B’s son, who has taken over his father’s band since his retirement. “It said, “This is American music–a folk-ethnic music form that has evolved in the U.S. and is now truly an American artform.’ It gave us the respect of other music genres, and it was wonderful.”
But Ed also takes into consideration the inherent inequities in the Grammy system—and their consequences.
“Because of flaws in the voting process, there are ways to skew votes and maybe favor larger artists over newer names—and that’s left sour tastes in the little guys’ mouths,” he said. “We have indie label releases where people haven’t even bothered submitting them in the last few years because it felt like pissing into the wind.”
He recognized that the polka category has only received 20 to 30 entries of late, when “maybe 50 to 80 recordings a year” are released.
“Money’s tight with everybody, and it costs $100 a year for membership for you to cast a vote that essentially doesn’t mean anything to you,” he continued. “Many polka patrons joined the Academy and were excited about being part of it 25 years ago, but maybe 15 percent of them are still voting members–and new people don’t want to sign up and pay to cast a vote that means nothing. So the interest in the Academy in the polka community is kind of a joke. It isn’t taken seriously. It’s a fantastic organization for larger genres of music, but for smaller ones where you can skew the results so easily, it’s hard to feel that you can make a difference.”
Ed referenced an article he read after Norah Jones won eight Grammys for her 2002 debut album “Come Away with Me.”
“`How could a newcomer come on the scene and win them all?’ it asked,” Ed recalled. “Being Ravi Shankar’s daughter didn’t hurt, but the album was recorded in six different studios featuring over 30 engineers, and nine different producers. They all have friends and cash in favors, and it’s like Facebook: It grows and grows and grows—a snowball effect. So you’re on an indie label with one studio without major label support, up against 12 producers with bazillion friends–and want to be Grammy-nominated?”
He saw a direct correlation here with polka.
“I read the article and saw the flaw in the voting process,” Ed said. “So many people vote for records they don’t know about, because of their alliances and friendships. It becomes a political machine versus truly acknowledging great artwork for great artwork—and that’s very unfortunate.”
To this end the former governor of the Academy’s Chicago chapter said he had suggested finding a technological means of requiring voters to listen to snippets of nominated recordings before being able to vote. “I very much enjoyed my time on the board and serving the Academy and learning about it,” Ed added. “It’s great for music and music industry professionals. I’m just sorry the polka community is so small that it doesn’t trickle down far enough to help it.”
The Versatones were nominated 18 times for the polka Grammy (they did win in 1986 for their “Another Polka Celebration” album).
“Whenever we were up for a Grammy, we always felt honored and wanted to recognize the Academy for honoring us,” Ed said. “So we always went to the awards show, and it was wonderful to meet and greet other people in the music industry. We took great pride in it–we really did.”
But Ed pointed out, too, that of the 109 Grammy categories, only a dozen or so get any quality broadcast time. And here he picks up on another one of my big problems with the Grammys.
“What about the other 97 categories?,” he asked. “What if every year they pick one of the smaller ones? Maybe let the Native Americans or Southern Gospel artists play half a tune. Or give all the nominees a 30-second spot and highlight them. These are five artists that no one ever has the opportunity to get exposed to, that are good and exciting and have been nominated by their peers. Present them to the people, for Christ’s sake!”
But Ed learned, as I did when I brought this up to the New York board, that “it’s all about advertising, and that means Kanye and U2. Because if people change the channel because they put on Native American or Southern Gospel nominees, they lose that ad money. Business is business, and the largest business of the Recording Academy is the Grammys telecast.”
Ed concluded on a note of caution.
“We all saw what happened here,” he said of the polka category elimination, “and I don’t see it coming back. But hopefully other categories can learn from us—and the Academy can fine-tune to avoid skews like the ones that affected us.”
Polka entries will now be accepted in the folk field (newly renamed American Roots Music), according to Freimuth. “The competition will be a lot stiffer, but I’m a great believer in the cream rising to the top,” he said.
It was intimated to me by another Academy member familiar with the Grammy procedures that if the polka community was able to “reorganize itself with some of the younger artists becoming more vocally and visibly active voting members,” polka album entries might increase and the Academy would reconsider the category’s viability. But membership costs aside, the polka industry itself is also in decline, observed Ed Blazonczyk.
“The older fans are in their 70s and 80s and are dying off—and their children aren’t coming back to it but going to other music forms,” he said. “We’re not filling dancehalls like we used to.”
Back when I was on the New York board, one of the Academy’s proudest activities was its educational outreach programs. But it was the wrong kind of education, generally geared toward helping high school students learn about and find jobs in the music industry. Last month, for instance, the chapter presented Grammy Career Day, in which Tri-State area high schoolers participated in “Songwriting,” “Vocal Technique” and “In the Studio” workshops prior to the horribly-named “The Playaz” panel of industry professionals dispensing career advice.
Until recently, the Recording Academy was called The National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences (NARAS). I much prefer the old name, mainly because of its focus on “recording arts.” If the New York chapter and the national Academy as a whole would refocus its educational efforts on arts over industry, maybe polka, along with other less mainstream but no less worthy music genres, would deservedly gain a wider audience, not to mention Grammy-friendly “viability.”