#1037 Polka No More

A sad day has come upon the American music industry. Once a haven for the diverse strains of musical ethnicity, a true reflection of the melting pot which is our country, we are seeing more and more musical clumps strained out of the homogenized fluid we call popular music.
Where’s an Irish ditty when you need one, or a plaintive Welsh ballad? Where’s the soaring squeal of a cat being killed you can only mimic with a bagpipe?
These things are fading away.
Flamenco is being morphed to Hispanic techno-beats. Calypso is being drugged into reggae stupefaction. Russian balalaikas are being played by rock stars.
And now the final blow. The people that put on the Grammy’s, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences have eliminated the category for “Best Polka Album”
Oh no! Say it isn’t so Joe.
No more category for best Polka album? Lawrence Welk is rolling over in his champagne-casketed grave. The bubble machine master would be appalled. If he was still alive, he’d one-and-a-two-and-a his baton on someone’s head.
Polka was the lifeblood of middle America, where oom-pah immigrants settled in for the grueling work of raising rutabagas and squeezing cheese curds. After a hard week, they’d like nothing more than to head to the rutabaga grange and unsling their accordions for a festive night of hopping around in lederhosen and dirndls to 2/4 time.
Much later, along came the te-le-vision and the charming Mr. Lawrence Welk, and the aging polkateers watched from their nursing home rec rooms as Mr. Wonnerful batoned a similarly aging troupe of polyester-clad performers through the tumultuous times of the syndicated Seventies.
He had died long before his reruns stopped, spawning rumors of Elvis-like sightings at convalescent hospitals and K-Marts.
That’s the essence of Polka. It doesn’t know when to quit.
Hey, aging America needs its music too. It can’t all be rock and roll, even if the Rolling Stones are a mossy old sixty plus.
Still, it’s incredibly ironic. The musical form most appreciated by the grandparent generation, no longer has a Grammy.
America, ya gotta love it.