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Wan LixinOpinion deputy editor of Shanghai Daily
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Grammys ditch best polka album award
Source: Agencies |
June 6, 2009, Saturday
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Print Edition
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IT'S enough to make any serious polka fan shove his plate of sausage aside, fling his lederhosen in the closet and shed a few tears in his beer.
The waltz is over for America's Polka King, Jimmy Sturr, not to mention every other squeezebox-loving, ompah-dancing fanatic who followed the Grammy Awards each year just to learn whether Sturr would collect yet another trophy for best polka album.
Moving to ensure its awards remain what it called "pertinent within the current musical landscape," the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences this week announced the elimination of the polka category.
While posters to polka Websites were outraged, Sturr was doing his best to take the news in stride.
"Sure I feel a little bad, but I'm grateful, man," said the 58-year-old musician who has won the best polka album trophy 18 of the past 24 years.
"The Academy did a lot, not only recognizing me but recognizing polka music," he said. He added that the recognition gave him a chance to fuse polka with pop, country, rock and folk as he worked with musicians such as Willie Nelson and Alison Krauss.
Still, he said there are millions of polka fans worldwide, and hundreds of working polka bands in the US alone. They have taken your grandfather's music, he said, and merged it with Tex-Mex, rock, Tejano and other forms to create a distinctly American sound.
Others said Sturr's record of Grammy wins helped do in the category.
"I think the fact that it was so dominated by one artist, that kind of killed the incentive for a lot of people to enter," said Carl Finch, whose Tex-Mex-Tejano-Conjunto-Polka fusion band Brave Combo upset Sturr to take the award in 1999 and 2004.
The waltz is over for America's Polka King, Jimmy Sturr, not to mention every other squeezebox-loving, ompah-dancing fanatic who followed the Grammy Awards each year just to learn whether Sturr would collect yet another trophy for best polka album.
Moving to ensure its awards remain what it called "pertinent within the current musical landscape," the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences this week announced the elimination of the polka category.
While posters to polka Websites were outraged, Sturr was doing his best to take the news in stride.
"Sure I feel a little bad, but I'm grateful, man," said the 58-year-old musician who has won the best polka album trophy 18 of the past 24 years.
"The Academy did a lot, not only recognizing me but recognizing polka music," he said. He added that the recognition gave him a chance to fuse polka with pop, country, rock and folk as he worked with musicians such as Willie Nelson and Alison Krauss.
Still, he said there are millions of polka fans worldwide, and hundreds of working polka bands in the US alone. They have taken your grandfather's music, he said, and merged it with Tex-Mex, rock, Tejano and other forms to create a distinctly American sound.
Others said Sturr's record of Grammy wins helped do in the category.
"I think the fact that it was so dominated by one artist, that kind of killed the incentive for a lot of people to enter," said Carl Finch, whose Tex-Mex-Tejano-Conjunto-Polka fusion band Brave Combo upset Sturr to take the award in 1999 and 2004.
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