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A Passion for Polka: Old-Time Ethnic Music in America

University of California Press

In 1986 an important event took place in American cultural history that eluded the attention of most students of our society. The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, the major arbiter of American popular music through its Grammy awards, established a new award category, polka music. Inclusion of the new category was notable not just for recognizing the quality of particular record albums; it also represented a much-belated formal acceptance of a new kind of music in American popular culture—not a new musical genre, for polka music had been around for some time, but a new level of serious attention to the significance of polka music on the American musical scene.

The recording artist honored with the first Grammy in the polka-music category was the appropriate recipient; a seventy-one-year-old Slovenian American bandleader from Cleveland named Frankie Yankovic, known for several decades as "America's Polka King." Although there have been other claimants to such a title, unquestionably Yankovic's claim was paramount. He had attained the widest popularity in that field and in fact had been "crowned" in a ceremony in the late 1940s, at the peak of polka's golden age. In any event, by adding this musical genre to country-western, pop, rock, and the other popular music forms recognized with Grammy awards, several decades after the polka's glory days, the National Academy gave the genre new professional status, an honor that certainly thrilled all polka aficionados. Presentation of the phonograph statuette to Yan-

kovic did more than make his fans happy, however; it also signified an important cultural change, the formal acceptance of polka music into this nation's popular culture.

The long neglect of this musical genre has been unfortunate, because its presence and performance have represented a little-known but vital aspect of American social life. The reason for the oversight reflects a general misunderstanding of the term "polka music" itself, which is an ambiguous and therefore misleading designation. Even the standard references about polka music are confusing: the dictionary definition, for example, defines the term too narrowly, identifying it as a lively dance of Bohemian origin done in a hop-step-close-step pattern in 2/4 time.1 While that designation is true as far as it goes, the polka is far more than just a type of musical recreation; it is also one of a group of many traditional dance elements in what should be known as the "old-time ethnic" music tradition. Old-time ethnic music is what Yankovic and his colleagues play and what in truth the National Academy cited. Instead of "the polka," the terms "polka-style" or "polka music" are preferable, suggesting a far broader genre.

"Polka music," such as that played by Yankovic and his colleagues, is in current discourse the popularized version of many varied tunes and dances of the European immigrant folk past. The normal repertoire of "polka" bands is not simply one type of dance music but rather a variety of pieces, including waltzes and marches, which are in fact dances once common among European peasants. In addition, polka music includes or stems from dance forms associated with specific ethnic groups, such as the German laendler, the Czech sousedska, the Polish oberek, the Hungarian-Gypsy czardas, the Ukrainian kolomyika, the Swedish schottische, the Italian tarantella, and even the dances of Yiddish klezmer ensembles. The National Academy's "polka music," then, is really the commercialized version of music derived from America's European immigrants.2

Because the term "polka" is so ambiguous, a more accurate term is obviously essential; fortunately, history provides one. At the height of the popularity of this kind of ethnic music, from around World War I through Yankovic's heyday, record companies and popular-music publications referred to this musical genre as "old-time" and occasionally "international" music.3 The term "old-time" presents a problem, however, because it has also been used by popular-music critics to describe another traditional genre, the folk-type music that

came out of the Southern Appalachian region, also known as "hillbilly" and later as "country-western" music. To distinguish the term more precisely for our purposes here, it is necessary to add "ethnic" to the designation "old-time."4 Unfortunately, the matter cannot rest there because this project cannot deal comprehensively with the music of all ethnic groups; music of this nation's Oriental, African, and Middle Eastern peoples is not examined here.5 Still, while concentrating almost exclusively on Euro-American cultures, this work suggests conclusions that may illuminate the lives of America's non-Western groups as well.

Perhaps because of the complexity of "ethnic old-time" music, ethnomusicologists and music historians have generally ignored or even deliberately avoided a genre that has also been referred to as "people's" music.6 They have preferred to give their serious attention to the better-known musical forms, such as the more traditional folk, jazz, rock, and country-western genres, the popular tunes of the nineteenth century and Tin Pan Alley, and, of course, classical music. Among academic intellectuals polka music has suffered from a bad image. Most serious critics claimed, for example, that it lacked artistic quality, in large part because it had a rather unsophisticated audience.

It was charged that ethnic old-time was the musical entertainment of America's lumpen proletariat, that uncultured—according to its critics—blue-collar working class who frequented the corner saloons and taverns of midwestern industrial cities. The musical taste of this audience, some observers asserted, ran no higher than to Lawrence Welk and his unsophisticated "mickey-mouse" or "corn" music associated with "beer, brats, and bellies."7

The charge of schlock does have some validity, an image fostered inadvertently, though regrettably, by the very purveyors of ethnic old-time music. To increase the genre's popularity and heighten the enjoyment of their audience, some polka musicians, bandleaders, and broadcasters often acted as clowns in their presentations. With promoters themselves approaching polka music as "happy" music, it is understandable why very few music critics took the music seriously during its heyday and later. One occasionally sees references to the genre as "novelty" music, in the same class as the zany comic renderings of Spike Jones, the rather eccentric bandleader of the 1940s.8

Until the current generation, leading cultural critics have es-

chewed or even condemned the study of all popular music and in fact have seriously questioned the academic study of American popular culture as a whole. A brief review of that debate illuminates the value of examining this dimension of our mass culture and clarifies the social and cultural processes represented by old-time ethnic music.

The issue of the ominous effects of the new media-based popular culture came to a head at the end of World War II, just when polka music was most widely played and heard. The timing was important, because that mid-century moment was a significant juncture of several media, old and new, which were broadcasting...