The following photo was taken near Eland, Wisconsin. It is a roadside billboard advertising medical services provided by Saint Clare's Hospital in Weston, Wisconsin. The musician is Joe Sazama of Spencer, Wisconsin.

Nice to see the concertina so prominently featured!

06/2009 - Back to Top

[Editor's note: The following article is derived from one originally published in the Chicago Tribune on June 21, 2009.]

By Howard Reich
Tribune Critic

To polka devotees, the news came like a slap in the face: After 24 years, the Grammy Awards were dropping the music as a stand-alone category.

No longer would polka bands across America be recognized alongside rock and rap, jazz and blues, with the most coveted piece of hardware in the music business. No longer would polka players have at least one day in the year -- when the Grammys are bestowed -- to bask in glory alongside Madonna and Coldplay, Jay-Z and Kanye, with a Grammy trophy all their own.

Oh, sure, the polka virtuosos will still be eligible in the best traditional folk album and best contemporary folk album categories, but it's not quite the same, is it? Plus, what chance will a polka band, of all things, really have against every folk genre under the sun?

Even now, a couple of weeks after the Grammys announced the news, the polka world is reeling.

"Why are we being left out?" asks Dave Ulczycki, president of the International Polka Association, based above the Polonia Banquets on South Archer Avenue.

"The ones that made the decision don't know popular music and how popular [polka] is around the country," says Jimmy Sturr, the biggest living star of the music (and owner of 18 polka Grammys).

"We had it, and it got taken away from us," protests John Krawisz, leader of the eclectic polka band FreezeDried, based in the Chicago area.

Yet the sad truth is that the world of polka -- like all things that once enjoyed a great heyday -- is shrinking, a fact the Grammy move has not only dramatized but documented.

When entries in any Grammy category fall below 25, the Awards and Nominations Committee begins to "assess the continued viability of the category," says Bill Freimuth, vice president of awards for the Recording Academy, which dispenses the prizes.

"Polka was in that [position] three years ago, for the first time in recent memory. And at that time the committee examined the situation and said, 'Let's give them another shot.'

"It got slightly better for a couple years, but this past year it took another dive. So they said, 'Perhaps it's time.' "

Which raises a critical question: Is the noble polka, which originated as a 19th Century Czech dance form but found new popularity among Poles and other ethnic groups in America, dying?

"Look -- I don't think the numbers are big like they were in the '50s and '60s," says Stas Bulanda, who has been playing polka in Chicago for 40 years and leads the Old School Review band. "But they're not so small where something terrible is going to happen to it. But I know we lost a lot of the old folks."

Indeed, "There has been a decline in the music over the last 25 years, there's no denying it," says Chicagoan Eddie Blazonczyk, who leads the world-famous Versatones, a band his legendary father, Eddie Sr., fronted for decades (the elder Blazonczyk is retired now).

"In Chicago, there were probably 10 to 20 dance halls that featured polka music, and probably 30 to 50 taverns that had polka music, back in the '60s and '70s," adds Blazonczyk, who says Chicago was "polka's Motown."

"Today, there's maybe five halls that still have some polka music, and it's sporadic. There's maybe one lounge, and it's on life support."

So what happened? Why have other historic forms of music such as jazz, blues and gospel flourished (each with multiple Grammy categories), while polka has declined?

Many polka cognoscenti cite social shifts outside the world of polka, and within it as well.

For starters, "Back in the '40s, '50s, '60s, '70s you had limited sources of entertainment: TV had three channels, and you had radio," says Blazonczyk. "With the introduction of the digital age, cable TV, hundreds of channels and DVDs, less folks were turning out at live music venues. And for the little guys, like polka musicians, that's going to hurt you even more."

Worse, polka music acquired a stigma that prevented it from developing young listeners. Lawrence Welk may have been huge on TV with older generations, but his stiff manner and fractured English did not exactly make him au courant.

Over time, polka music in America practically became synonymous with four-square hoofing that bordered on camp.

"Every time there's a mention of a polka festival in the media, the first thing they show is two blue-haired older ladies dancing together, or maybe a kielbasa-eating contest," laments Krawisz, of the band FreezeDried. "They never show the serious side of polka music, or how it could be."

Yet at one point, polka was huge in this country. Frankie Yankovic, who justly billed himself as America's Polka King, entertained no less than Lana Turner, Rosalind Russell and Joseph Cotten in Hollywood; scored million-selling records with "Just Because" (1948) and "The Blue Skirt Waltz" (1949); and later won legions of fans with the immortal "Who Stole the Kishka?"

He achieved this through the unique buoyancy and optimism of polka.

"You know how Guy Lombardo used to say his music was the sweetest this side of heaven?" Yankovic told me in 1990. "Well, I like to say that polka is the happiest music this side of heaven."

Indeed, the rhythmic exuberance and instrumental radiance of the best polka music can prove difficult to resist. When the top practitioners are at work, the music implores people to get up and dance.

Yankovic predictably won the first polka Grammy, in 1985, a high point for a music that soon went into decline, at least in popularity.

Yet the irony remains that as the audience has gotten smaller, the field has become more richly complex. Regional styles abound, from the big-band, up-tempo Eastern style epitomized by Sturr to the brassy, less hurried Polish brand championed in Chicago; from the classic Slovenian style of Yankovic, with its small-band emphasis on the accordion, to the Tex-Mex influence epitomized by the Brave Combo, of Texas.

Moreover, New Wave polka bands -- like the hard-core San Francisco group Polkacide -- have sought to coax the music in fresh directions. FreezeDried, for instance, features three female African-American singers and embraces rock, zydeco, gospel, you name it.

"We're trying to show that polkas can be cool," says leader Krawisz. "I would like to see a modern polka band on 'Dancing With the Stars,' or 'The Tonight Show,' or 'David Letterman.' ... There's just not enough money spent on advertising and marketing of polka."

At the very least, the schedule of upcoming polka picnics, festivals and broadcasts suggests that the music endures, even if the audiences aren't what they used to be.

If Chicago isn't the center of the polka universe anymore, neither is any single city. In the age of the Internet, say aficionados, the music has no real center of gravity. Instead, it prospers in pockets in Illinois, the Great Plains, Ohio, Pennsylvania, along the East Coast and in Texas, among other spots.

To polka's most passionate advocates, the battle to keep the music alive continues.

"We're not going to quit," says Blazonczyk. "This music is in our heart and it's in our soul, and we can't let it go."

06/2009 - Back to Top