Accordions as high art? You bet! The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City is running a special exhibition called Accordions and Harmonicas of the 19th Century. It showcases thirty accordions and harmonicas of different styles and origins, many of which have never been displayed before. Hurry though — the exhibit ends March 31.

Looking for an accordion concert this weekend? Or maybe an accordion club meeting? Check out our newly-launched accordion event calendar, where you can find squeezebox events across the country. Events like:

• Illinois Polkafest (Naperville, IL)
• Brave Combo in concert (Houston, TX)
• National Button Accordion Festival (Yukon, OK)

New events will be added daily. Keep up to date by subscribing to one of our calendar RSS feeds: there’s one for most recently added events, plus feeds for each event category. (So if you’re only interested in polka events or concerts, you can just subscribe to those.) So many options!

And you can help us create the most comprehensive list of accordion events anywhere. If you have an accordion event to promote or hear about something in your area, just let us know and we’ll post it!

The Super Bowl is still a week away, but concertina fans are gearing up for their big event this weekend — the 29th annual Concertina Bowl in Blaine, MN. It’ll be twelve hours of dancing and listening to nonstop concertina music, including an appearance by Wisconsin’s “Concertina Kid” Gary Brueggen.

Minnesota Public Radio did a feature on the Concertina Bowl today, focusing on concertina makers Bob Novak and Michael Smieja. Each year, they build a handful of custom-order concertinas that use a soft, quiet action designed by Smieja. (I love the plexiglass version that shows the concertina’s inner workings.) You can listen to the full segment (with music!) on the MPR website:

Minnesota Public Radio: Concertina Bowl (Real Audio)

Can Emmitt Smith dance a polka? Maybe, but he won’t be one of the contestants at Polka Dancing Stars, an event next week that will showcase five top polka dancing couples and highlight a variety of polka styles. Michelle Genrich, president of the Polka America Corporation, hopes the event will help bring polka into the mainstream:

“We want to put polka music more into the (general) music scene… It’s a lot more than lederhosen and the foofy skirt.”

Polka Dancing Stars takes place next Friday night at the Grand Theater in downtown Wausau, WI, with music by Neal Zunker and the Music Connection (named 2006 Band of the Year by the Wisconsin Polka Hall of Fame).

If you’re like me, you were probably up late on Sunday night, waiting anxiously for the clock to strike midnight so you could begin celebrating National Polka Month. Positioned far enough away from National Accordion Awareness Month (June) to avoid conflicts, National Polka Month encourages fans to support local polka shows during a time when attendance typically slows due to bad weather.

Among the big polka events scheduled this month are the International Polka Association’s Festival of Bands in Chicago and Benefit Dance in Ludlow, MA. For those hoping to escape the cold weather entirely, a handful of polka cruises are setting sail, including the Ultimate Polka Cruise and Jimmy Sturr’s Polka in Paradise.

If you can’t get out of town, tune in to one of the many Internet radio stations devoted to polka music, like 247PolkaHeaven.com, the Polka Jammer Network, or Prime Time Polkas. If you’re at work, pump up the volume and share the polka spirit with your co-workers.

So as you begin making plans for this special month, I leave you with this rumination on polka music by Carl Finch of Brave Combo:

“As nature and society become more unstable, humans will return to the basics and retreat from the overbearing self-consciousness of pop culture. Polka serves two purposes: good music and freedom from pretense in an environment where the hip and unhip freely mix and mingle.”

I think that’ll be our new motto — “Let’s Polka: Where the Hip and Unhip Freely Mix and Mingle.”

Nominations for the 49th annual Grammy Awards were announced this morning in Hollywood. The nominees for Best Polka Album are:

• Batteries Not Included by Eddie Blazonczyk’s Versatones
• As Sweet As Candy by Lenny Gomulka & Chicago Push
• Party Dress by LynnMarie & The Boxhounds
• Good Friends Good Music by Walter Ostanek & Fred Ziwich
• Polka in Paradise by Jimmy Sturr and his Orchestra

While Best Polka Album may be the most accordion-friendly category, those weren’t the only nominees who featured accordions in their work. Julieta Venegas was nominated for Best Latin Pop Album, the Klezmatics for Best Contemporary World Music Album, Weird Al for Best Comedy Album, and pretty much every group in the Best Norteno Album category has an accordion player. The full list of nominees is on the Grammy website.

The awards ceremony (hosted by Stephen Colbert) will air live on CBS on February 11, 2007. Of course, since there are 108 categories, most awards — including Best Polka Album — will be handed out in a ceremony before the televised show.

Between now and the awards ceremony, we’ll post an in-depth review of each Best Polka Album nominee. Will Jimmy Sturr walk away with his 16th Best Polka Grammy or will someone else get a taste of Grammy glory? We’ll find out in February!

There’s a tribute to legendary Tex-Mex singer/songwriter Freddy Fender tomorrow night at Antone’s in Austin. The impressive lineup features plenty of accordion and includes Joe Ely, Little Joe y La Familia, Los Texmaniacs, Conjunto Aztlan, Johnny Degollado, Joel Guzman, Ruben Ramos, and more. Tickets are $10 and the show starts at 7pm.

If you can’t make it to Austin tomorrow night, check out this NPR tribute that includes some great interview clips with Freddy.

Forget watching football and falling asleep on the couch; I’d rather spend my turkey day at Tony Petkovsek’s Thanksgiving Polka Party.

A lifelong promoter of Cleveland-Slovenian music, Tony Petkovsek and his Thanksgiving weekend polka events have been drawing thousands to Cleveland for over 40 years. Tony also hosts the longest running daily polka radio show in America (45 years!), currently heard on WELW-1330AM in Cleveland and online at 247PolkaHeaven.com.

This year’s Thanksgiving Polka Party runs Thursday through Saturday and features a cornucopia of Cleveland-style polka bands, including the Joey Tomsick Orchestra, the Mike Schneider Band, the Eddie Rodick Orchestra, and many more. Accordion legends Walter Ostanek and Joey Miskulin will also make appearances. The weekend is capped off by the 19th Annual Cleveland-Style Polka Hall of Fame Awards Ceremony.

A Hawk and a Hacksaw
uploaded by OtterFreakThe Wordless Music Series is devoted to the idea that the “worlds of classical and contemporary instrumental music… share more in common than conventional thinking might suggest.” Each concert brings rock and classical musicans together in an intimate setting in hopes of introducing fans of each to music they might not otherwise discover.

Last week’s concert in New York City included New Mexico duo A Hawk and a Hacksaw, which features violinist Heather Trost and multi-instrumentalist Jeremy Barnes on accordion and percussion (often simultaneously). Leaning heavily on accordion, violin, and brass, their music definitely has a Balkan/klezmer feel, but never really sounds traditional. They remind me a little of DeVotchKa, but more intimate-sounding and less dramatic.

A Hawk and a Hacksaw released their third album, The Way the Wind Blows, just last month. Check out the first track, “Song for Joseph”:

A Hawk and a Hacksaw: Song for Joseph (MP3 download)