The Cajun Squeezebox Blog has a list of winners from last night’s Le Cajun Awards sponsored by the Cajun French Music Association. The Pine Leaf Boys won Band and Album of the Year, while Jason Frey was named Accordionist of the Year. Bonjour Louisiane host Pete Bergeron and accordionist Kevin Naquin nabbed Song of the Year honors for “Ma Petit Ange (My Little Angel).”

You can catch some of the winners, and plenty of other talented Cajun musicians, at the Le Cajun Music Festival this weekend in Lafayette, LA.

Pine Leaf Boys: Pine Leaf Boy Two Step (MP3 download)

The first-ever nominees for the new Cajun/Zydeco Grammy are still a few months away, but the nominees for the Cajun French Music Association’s annual “Le Cajun” Music Awards were announced this week. The CFMA is dedicated to the promotion and preservation of Cajun music and culture.

The Pine Leaf Boys lead the pack with six nominations (out of seven categories), including Band of the Year, Best CD of the Year, and the People’s Choice Award. Our favorite category — Accordionist of the Year — includes Kristi Guillory of the Lafayette Rhythm Devils, Wilson Savoy of the Pine Leaf Boys, and Jason Frey.

The 19th annual “Le Cajun” Music Awards will be held at the Heymann Performing Arts Center in Lafayette, LA on August 17th, and will be followed by a two-day Cajun music festival at Blackham Coliseum featuring a number of award-winning Cajun artists.

[Found via the Cajun Squeezebox Blog]

If you listen to a local radio station streaming online, a service like Pandora, or an online polka station like 247PolkaHeaven or Polka Jammer, you’ve probably heard the uproar over the Copyright Royalty Board’s decision to substantially raise performance royalty rates paid by online radio operators (webcasters). Starting July 15, royalty rates will be changed from a percentage of revenue to a per-song, per-listener fee, with a minimum fee of $500 per month. The rates are also retroactive to January 2006.

These new royalty rates (which are collected by a record industry-backed organization called SoundExchange) threaten to put many webcasters out of business entirely. SoundExchange counters that most of these increased royalties go to artists, who deserve to be fairly compensated for their work. The issue is coming to a head in Congress where the recently-proposed Internet Radio Equality Act intends to reduce rates and bring them in line with what satellite radio operators pay. It appears unlikely, though, that Congress will act on the bill before the new rates take effect on Sunday.

(Note: This is a mile-high view of a relatively complicated issue; if you want to learn more, David Byrne has one of the clearer explanations I’ve read.)

So, where do online polka radio stations fit into all this?

Continue reading ‘Preserving Online Polka Radio’ »

Bobby Jones — leader and accordion player for the Bobby Jones Czech Band in Wharton, Texas — has been missing for the past four days. Jones was last seen on Friday evening and didn’t turn up for his Saturday morning polka radio show at KULP (1390 AM) in El Campo, Texas.

The Bobby Jones Polka Band has been a mainstay of the Southeast Texas polka circuit for nearly 26 years and has even made appearances on RFD-TV’s Big Joe Polka Show. Jones also hosts a popular radio show seven days a week, playing a mix of polka and western swing.

If you have any information about Bobby’s whereabouts, get in touch with the Wharton Country Sheriff’s Department.

A legendary performer, teacher, and champion of the accordion, Maddalena Belfiore-Greco passed away last Friday. She began playing the accordion at age five and went on to study with some of the greatest accordion teachers, including Sanford Hertz, Charles Nunzio, Eugene Ettore, and Pietro Frosini. She eventually attended Julliard and, at age 17, gave a recital at Carnegie Hall.

Belfiore-Greco also authored several accordion technique books, including the Myron Floren Method books (in collaboration with Myron) and three seminal works on the bellows shake. In 1958, she opened the Belfiore Accordion School in her hometown of Kearny, NJ, and judged numerous international and national music competitions. In a recent interview, her advice to accordion students emphasized the importance of performing in public:

“Listen to your teacher, and very important – practice! You have to have goals. Also, what happens today (different from when I studied) is that no one has a chance to play any place. I used to play at all these Clubs and Organizations, and that doesn’t happen so much any more I feel… We used to play any place we could. It was all part of the teaching and learning process. Kids going out to play publicly is probably the best lesson they could ever learn!”

In 1971, after several years on the Board of Directors, Belfiore-Greco became the first female president of the American Accordionists’ Association. She was also a longtime officer in the prestigious Confédération Internationale des Accordéonistes (CIA) and was instrumental in bringing the 2007 Couple Mondiale accordion competition to the United States.

To learn more about Maddalena Belfiore-Greco’s life and impact on the accordion world, check out the thorough obituary at Accordion USA, as well as the fantastic interview mentioned above, which was conducted just last year. It includes some incredible old photos and news clippings of the extraordinary life of this accordion legend.

There was a great AP article today on accordions at the New Orleans Jazz Fest, calling accordions at the festival “popular, prolific and downright sexy.” Just listen to one female festival-goer’s description of Buckwheat Zydeco:

“He is so sexy… There is just something about a guy and a squeezebox.”

I swear, I did not make that quote up. The article pointed out that accordions weren’t confined to the cajun/zydeco stage, but that “they were showing up this year on the big stages and even in some of the big bands”, noting performances by Calexico and the New Orleans Klezmer Allstars. Sounds like this accordion thing might just be catching on…

In their roundup of the best and worst from last weekend’s Coachella Festival, the Press-Enterprise declares the accordion the festival’s “best offbeat instrument,” noting that it’s “not just for polka bands anymore.” They cite accordion-fueled performances by some of our favorite artists, including Julieta Venegas, Gogol Bordello, and the Decemberists. (Though no mention of Arcade Fire, another Coachella band with a penchant for accordions.)

[Found via TDA’s Wall of Wheeze]

Here’s a feel-good story for your weekend: a Monroe Times piece on Del Heins, a Wisconsin accordionist who’s been entertaining local audiences for more than 60 years. In the mid-1950s, he formed a polka band, the Heins Brothers Combo, with his two older brothers. After they passed away, he mostly played small gatherings and family celebrations but in the past few years, business has been booming. He plays the monthly fish fry at Turner Hall, a steady stream of gigs at senior centers in the Monroe area, and an assortment of polka masses and Cheese Days (this is Wisconsin, after all).

“I’ve never played somewhere where someone wasn’t tapping their toe or swaying to the music… I play these songs over and over and over, and people still enjoy them… It’s happy music… It makes me feel good, and it makes other people feed good.”

Further proof, indeed, that polka is happiness.

From the Saskatoon Star Phoenix comes this odd news item about a 66-year-old Regina man who shot his accordion during a domestic dispute. The article is short on details, but he was described in court as being “deeply upset over a church-related matter” at the time of the incident. Maybe he was angry because his church wouldn’t have a polka mass?