POLKA MUSIC: DUMBED-DOWN, OR... LOST,... STOLEN, AND... STRAYED ...AND ...CUI BONO ...FOR WHOSE BENEFIT???
The polka music which we all love...if you haven't noticed recently, has gone "hee-haw and doo-wop " during the past fifteen or more years . Well, DUH!!!
Those of you polka fans("fanatics")who regularly listen to polka music on your local radio stations and/or on the "round-the-clock " internet shows, for nearly two decades ...and more, continue to listen to a steady barrage of "second-hand, warmed-up, left-over hash" polka music. This polka music, re-written in a 2/4 tempo from other genres leaves a person to question and to wonder whether he is listening to a "red-neck two-step radio show" from Texas or he is listening to an "oldies rock music program" for aging geezers.
And, the IRONY(look up the word, please) of it all, is that these selections of "old/classic rock music and country & western music get a second chance to become marketable(?) and famous(?) once again ---as dumbed-down versions of polka music." (Yeah, "Play it again, Sam..one more time...")And, the ultimate IRONY and the ultimate INSULT to the memory of your immigrant ancestors who brought this "happy blue-collar, working-class music" to America, is that these songs have actually won GRAMMY AWARDS!!! Yes, these award-winning polka recordings by the "famous polka band(s)," that won Grammy award after Grammy award, some complete with double-entendre lyrics, suggestive themes, and anti-family topics, in today's music world of polkas, seemed to be the best thing on the airwaves sinced sliced kielbasa. Well, DUH!!!
I do hope I haven't bored you---yet...
One of the General Managers of radio station WHRW-FM during the 1990's was quoted as saying, time and again, "If ya don't stand for something, you'll stand for ANYTHING!"
The abovementioned quotation, stuck in the frontal lobe of my brain, actually began to make my head throb in the early 1990's when I first heard "All My Lovin," originally recorded in the 1960's by the Beatles, in a 2/4 tempo. That song was the actual tip of the iceberg for what was to emerge next on the polka music scene. And, for the next sixteen years, it literally became an avalanche of old rock music songs and country and western music making their way on to the airwaves of polka shows across the nation. Well, DUH!!!
Yes, and this "second-hand, warmed-up, left-over hash "polka music continued to win Grammy Awards, multiple Grammy Award after Grammy Award... And , at first, some people in the polka music business applauded this great effort and all the publicity for after all, polkas were in the spotlight and were winning Grammy after Grammy... And then, some people(yes, even the same ones) began to feel a little nervous and sick to their stomach about this "run" of Granmmy Awards. ( I'll discuss this phenomenon in detail later).
The question you may ask is, why am I bothering to place this post on my website, now and today in August of 2007?!
The answer is simple...in the early part of the third millennium, I went to polka chat rooms, voiced my opinion, and received the usual answers. Some of these include:
1)*We gotta put some new life into all of the polkas, man,... they're dying!!!"
2)We HAVE to dump the polkas with European language lyrics and play polkas ONLY with English lyrics.
3)If we play /record polkas with music that somebody else knows, such as mainstream rock or the country and western music maybe ,just maybe, polkas will make a... comeback...
4)Let's try this ________________style of music and put it to a 2/4 tempo for "the younger generation."
The rest of the answers are almost all of the same type, " We gotta make changes so polkas won't die out. Let's try it/something/anything to keep polkas from dying out."
To be continued... AND I WILL MAKE MY POINT TO BE VERY EXPLICIT AND VERY CLEAR ON THIS POST , I PROMISE!!!
IT'S JUST GONNA TAKE A LITTLE BIT OF TIME...CUZ ....WELL, DUH!!!
Sincerely,
Daniel Jan Walikis
Recent Comments