umpa umpa or oompa oompa?--whatever, I love polka!

[hermetic]

I'm feeling a bit drained from the last two essays I wrote, so how about a little fluff

Comments

[boxofdelights]

I never knew how accordions got to Mexico.

[t0rque]

I think it's weird that white people like it too.

Not always in a good way. There is some bad polka out there.

[vogelein]

What an awesome story! I'd never realized that's where accordions in norteño music came from, either. And polka's a good thing to love! It's a fun, relatively easy dance that everyone can participate in.

Though it's not anywhere near the same, the Irish got influenced by German music a lot, too -- and I'm willing to bet they get their accordions from the same place. Irish polkas are played at top speed, and come out sounding almost like bluegrass.

[mhnicholson]

Bluegrass definitely has some polka heritage in it, even if it's hard to hear it through the mandolins.

This whole thread has me thinking of the movie Schultze Gets the Blues where a retiring salt miner who hobbies as a traditional German musician gets hooked on zydeco and travels to the US.

[easwaran]

I had no idea that there was this influence in Mexican culture, and didn't know about the central European immigration. I just assumed that the beer is Pilsner because very small German minorities were the first main brewers there, just like in India, Thailand, China, and Japan, where the beers are all much more German style than Belgian or English. (At least, judging by the beers from those countries that get exported to the relevant ethnic restaurants in the US and Australia.)

[vito_excalibur]

Haha, seriously! I am from a part of Texas with huge amounts of both German and Mexican history and I always thought it was funny that we were so...bi-polkar.