[78-L] Polkas eliminated as a Grammy category

[Andrea Walsh]

This is sad.  I see their reasoning, but it's a shame.  The music of the
past seems to be getting more and more marginalized in the media... or am I
wrong?  Well at least there;s still the Big Joe Polka show...

Andrea

On Fri, Jun 5, 2009 at 9:25 AM, <soundthink at aol.com> wrote:

>
> 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
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