Tell the truth. You read the headline and already
you’re seeing goofily dressed guys and gals slugging steins of beer
and dancing to accordion atrocities, aren’t you? “Most people write polka off as a joke,”
says Carl Finch, the founder of Brave Combo of Denton, Texas, “but
when it’s approached from a nonjudgmental position it’s really
soul-filling music.”
In its 27 years, Brave Combo has accomplished a great
deal in resurrecting the good name of polka. The group has won two Grammys
and received several nominations, appeared on Fox’s The Simpsons, and worked with
symphony orchestras. All along the way they’ve taken Finch’s
passion for polka and run with it, fighting the stereotypes of the
much-maligned music with an incredibly tenacious fervor and creative
spirit. “One of our polka-specific issues was to
release it from the shackles of beer, sausage, and lederhosen — those
things that had nothing to do with the music,” he explains.
“Folk music is a very open genre, but you never see a polka band at a
folk festival that commonly has bluegrass, Cajun, zydeco, and other types
of bands.”
Even as Brave Combo continues its unlikely but
exciting run, Finch sees the treatment of polka as indicative of the larger
field of human relations in general. “There is no way of not dissolving borders
around the world, so if we can understand others better, that is a good
thing,” he says. “We pushed ourselves to take our music more
responsibly.”
Finch first discovered polka while studying for his
master’s degree in art. He was enraptured by its sincere soulfulness
and drawn to its cultural oddness. “The band was as much conceptual as it was
musical when we formed,” says Finch. “I wanted to play this
music as a rock & roll band — playing the hip world by playing
the opposite of hip.”
Since then Brave Combo has performed worldwide and
recorded more than two dozen albums. Along with the unmistakably polka
production, one other common thread ties it all together. “You can go through life being bummed or
entertained,” says Finch. “It really boils down to how much fun
I’m having.”
Sometimes, playing the “Beer Barrel
Polka” can be a barrel of monkeys.
This article appears in Jul 6-12, 2006.
