[78-L] Polkas eliminated as a Grammy category

[soundthink at aol.com]

June 5, 2009

Polka Music Is Eliminated as Grammy Award Category

By BEN SISARIO
After 24 years, polka has had its last dance at the Grammys.


Jimmy Sturr, polka superstar, has won 18 Grammy Awards.

The Recording Academy, which bestows the Grammy Awards, announced late on Wednesday that the polka category would be eliminated, saying in a statement that it had been cut “to ensure the awards process remains representative of the current musical landscape.”

To many in the polka world, that read as a kind of industry code meaning that their genre — once capable of supporting artists with million-selling hits, but long since relegated to micro-niche status — had slipped off the mainstream radar entirely.

“It’s devastating,” said Carl Finch of Brave Combo, a band from Denton, Tex., that has won the Grammy twice. “Polka is so misunderstood, you know, the butt of jokes. 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 news was met with sadness but little surprise. The number of albums considered by the Recording Academy for the polka award has dwindled in recent years. In 2006, for example, only 20 albums were considered, and of the five nominees, only one album had wide distribution.

“When it gets down to around 20 entries, just by entering, you have a one in five chance of being nominated,” said Bill=2
0Freimuth, the academy’s vice president for awards. “That’s not as competitive as we’d like these awards to be.”

Winning a Grammy can be a huge career boost for any act, particularly those in genres like polka that get little other mainstream attention, said Jimmy Sturr, who with 18 Grammys — only one fewer than Bruce Springsteen — is the music’s biggest name.

“There are a lot of great bands in the polka field,” Mr. Sturr said. “I’m not going to say I’m the best band in the whole world, but we’re just as good as any. But this put us over and above. It made us almost, almost a household word.”

The polka Grammy was first given in 1986. (It went to one of the genre’s last big stars, Frankie Yankovic, who died in 1998.) But it has long been under fire by critics of the awards, who say that the field is simply too small to sustain its own category. Some also complain that it has lost its value since the competition has been so dominated by Mr. Sturr, a slick nontraditionalist whose albums feature guest appearances by the likes of Willie Nelson.

“It’s basically the same person winning it all the time,” said Dave Ulczycki, president of the International Polka Association in Chicago. “I like his music, and I like the person himself. But Jimmy is not a polka band per se.”

Polka is not the only genre affected by the reshuffling. The best contemporary folk/Am
ericana award — which was won this year by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss’s “Raising Sand” — will be split into two categories (best contemporary folk album and best Americana album), and best Latin urban album has been combined with best Latin rock or alternative album into best Latin rock, alternative or urban album. The total number of categories decreases by one, to 109.

Next year’s Grammy Award ceremony will take place earlier than usual, on Jan. 31.

Mr. Sturr said that the loss of the Grammy and the mainstream visibility it brings would cause damage to polka as a genre, but that he had no doubts about its ability to endure. “Polka isn’t the biggest,” he said, “but it’s not the smallest, either.”

***********
Cary Ginell