Polka music can survive this snub

I never had much use for the Grammy awards, and the latest news from Grammyville just confirms my belief that they are a bunch of hooey.

I speak, of course, of the elimination of polka music from the list of Grammy categories. The buffoons at the National Academy for the Recording Arts and Sciences decided that the polka Grammy no longer fit into the academy’s mission of remaining “pertinent within the contemporary music landscape.”

Obviously, their landscape does not include Chicago, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, South Bend, Southern Lower Michigan, Texas, or my house.

Yes. I love polkas. All kinds — Polish, Slovenian, Tex-Mex, you name it. It’s happy music. I just can’t be angry when there’s a polka playing. And no, I don’t come from polka people. We’re not Polish, Slovenenian, Czech, German, Michigander, Tex or Mex. I just like the music. And polka prejudice really gets my Irish up.

Even news accounts of the Grammy elimination carried that sneer of condescension that polka fans know all too well.

“It’s enough to make any serious polka fan shove his plate of sausage aside, fling his lederhosen in the closet and go out and shed a few tears in his beer,” wrote John Rogers of the Associated Press. “Posters to Internet sites catering to polka fans (yes, there are such places) were outraged ...”

I don’t know about you, but that looks like polka profiling to me.

The root of the problem, I guess, is the fact that one polka maestro — Jimmy Sturr — tends to win the Grammy. In fact, he has 18 of the little trinkets on his mantel. There’s a reason for that. He’s really good. And he’s come up with some pretty good music by joining up with people outside the polka world — country legend Willie Nelson, the banjo virtuoso Bela Fleck, Cajun star Jo-El Sonnier, among others. You ought to hear the Willie Nelson/Jimmy Sturr Orchestra version of the Bob Wills chestnut, “All Night Long.” Yee-ha.

Oh, it’s worth noting that Jimmy Sturr is Irish-American, too. Take that, profilers.

Of course, polka has always been unhip. That’s the point. It takes a lot of work to be hip. You have to dress the right way, say the right things even if you don’t mean them, be seen in the right places, associate with the right people, put down the people who don’t act exactly like you, and worry every day that you’re going to be found out as the fraud you really are. Trust me, I was in the music business for decades and that is exactly how it works.

With polka, you just relax and have fun. It’s even restorative. Did you know that the famous boxer Tony Zale, from Gary, used to love to go polka dancing at the Silver Bells social club between bouts? True.

The people who put down polka as the music of mulish Central Europeans with unpronounceable last names can go ahead and try to outhip each other. As for the Grammys — I think polka will be able to get along without them. Let NARAS have its contemporary music landscape. You know, in categories like “surround sound production” and “album notes.” Polka fans will go on having fun, just like always, and you can’t say that about everyone.

I have yet to see people break into smiles and start clapping to the beat of some album notes.

© 2009 Mike Redmond. All Rights Reserved.

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