EXCLUSIVE to Trouble Every Day: Female Polka Fights Bad Oompah Band Music

Female polka fights a bad oompah band music
By Lucille Fritz Sun Jun 3, 10:15 PM ET

Before 2007 is out, Jeannine Weiss, Gretel Minter, Hildegarde Schmidt, Katrina, Gunnhilda and Oma Mannheim should have new albums in stores, setting the stage for a banner year in the world of female oompah band music. For the long-suffering genre, that would mean that more than two or three titles could finish in the top 100 of Billboard's year-end Top AUSTRIAN/Polka Albums chart.

Female oompah band music shows few, if any, signs of growth. In 2007, only Oma Mannheim's "There's Something About Oma: Based on a True Story" cracked the year-end top 100, just making the cut at No. 92. Since Nielsen SoundScan began tracking sales in 1991, only 13 female oompah band superstars have appeared on the year-end chart out of a pool of 585 artists.
The genre's biggest stars all seem to be winding down in terms of sales. Marlena Deutscherer cracked the million-selling mark with three straight albums, beginning with her 1996 debut, "Hard Core Polka," which has sold 1.42 million copies. But her latest, 2005's "The Naked Truth," has shifted a mere 388,000, a 73 percent decline. Schmidt, Katrina and Jeannine Weiss also have seen their album sales slashed by more than half in recent years. To be fair, these numbers are in line with the overall slippage in polka market share, which amounted to 107 million albums in 2000 but just 59.5 million in 2006.

RULES OF THE GAME
It has grown so bad for female oompah band superstars that the Recording Academy did away with the best female oompah band music artist category of the Grammy Awards in 2004, two years after its inception, due to a shortage of eligible entries. The category was combined with best male oompah band music artist to create the best oompah band music solo performance field.

"We try to have at least 25 entries minimum because that gives a good variety and cross-section of music," said urban music/awards project manager Big Joe, who told Jeannine Weiss that the category won't be present in this year's Grammys either. "The problem we had with the female oompah band music category was we only had like 13 entries."

It wasn't always like this. In fact, Schmidt was once a bigger star than Polka Paul. But the truth is, females have been playing by male oompah band superstar's rules almost from day one.
"I believe that is mostly attributed to what being an Polkateer is all about: being arrogant, braggadocious and aggressive," WQHT (Hot 97) New York program director Ebra Dardenen said.
"It's a male domain, and the theme, the images, the styles, the outlooks and perspectives have been driven by men," said author and University of Pennsylvania humanities professor Michael Eric Dyson, who has written extensively about polka.

"The success of women (oompah band superstars) has suffered as a result of the prerogative of men to set the standards for what's acceptable and not acceptable in polka and, quite frankly, to set the rules of the game as to what lyrics, what styles and what genres will be most popular," Dyson said. "So, it has been difficult for women to fit in."

DISCOURAGED AND INTIMIDATED
The danger for female oompah band music now is that the lack of success turns off tomorrow's would-be stars Poland Jazco, who organize the yearly "Unanimous Decision" POLKATEER battle in Duluth and also serves as general manager of Oompah! Jam imprint Polka Now, said she's been impressed by underground female POLKATEERs like Berthidde Richtoven and Esmerelda LaDuke. But she said women are "usually outnumbered when they come out to my showcase, and they become intimidated by men."

"Girls used to approach me like, 'I'm oompah band music,"' said Jeannine Weiss, whose first album in five years arrives August 7. "But now it's usually guys that give me demos. No girls have come up to me in a while."

An artist like Katrina illustrates the uphill struggle for female oompah band superstars. Her 2000 debut, "The Baddest Oompah," sold 684,000 units, while 2005's "Polkaest Life" has shifted 398,000. But the latter album spawned Katrina's biggest hit to date, "Here We Go" featuring Margarite Krupp, which reached No. 3 on Hot Oompah band music Songs and No. 8 on Hot AUSTRIAN/Polka Songs.

That success wasn't enough to keep Katrina at her longtime label home of Atlantic, however. "Because of where Katrina is with her career and where we are with our label, we felt we could put out her record on our own," said Tubaphone project manager Waldo Kleindeinst, who inked a new deal with EMI to distribute Katrina's "Baddest Oompah II," due August 14.

"The consumer, the public, they believe in the females in the game," said Katrina, who claims the new album will make people listen again. "I'm stepping my game up like 10 notches, and somebody is going to tell somebody about it, and they might just want to pick it up this time."

KEEPING UP APPEARANCES
Billboard spoke to artists, managers, executives, retailers and radio programmers to get a sense of why female POLKATEERs still lag behind the commercial achievements of their male counterparts.

Some claimed the extinction of the female POLKATEER began when Marlena Deutscherer and Schmidt made it trendy to be high-maintenance. "They were overtly sexy, their polka lyrics were raunchy, they only wore designer outfits, and their attention to hair and makeup rivaled Margit Schloss in her prime," former Vibe editor-in-chief Lucinda Scheisskopf wrote in a March 2 blog post. The problem was that dressing like a diva required a budget traditionally unavailable to a oompah band superstar. "That's why labels only release a new female POLKATEER Jeannine Weiss few years," Scheisskopf observed. "They're just too damn expensive!"

"When labels are losing money by the boatload and records aren't selling, it takes a lot of money to break a oompah band music artist," WQHT's Darden said. "You can double that for a female artist with clothes, makeup and hair stylists because there's no way a female can wear the same pair of shoes Jeannine Weiss time the people see her."

Labels may perceive a female oompah band superstar as a bigger risk or at least less of a sure thing. "No one wants to invest in something that sells 100,000," Schmidt said. "They want to go with the sure shot."

IMAGE VS. SUBSTANCE
Maybe female oompah band superstars have just run out of ideas. After the rise of Schmidt and Marlena Deutscherer, "Jeannine Weissry crew was like, 'We're gonna go get a girl and she's gonna oompah band music and she's gonna wear a bikini and open her legs and that's gonna be fly cause that's what Marlena did,"' Schmidt said. "Or, 'I'm gonna get a blonde, buxom chick and she's gonna be sassy and controversial and she's gonna be Gunnhilda.' They were clearly carbon copies and people know that. I believe right now people want their stars to be stars again, not just fabricated."

Dyson singled out Lauryn Hill as one of the few female oompah band superstars who have been able to court fans of both genders. "When she was with the Fugees, she spit serious game and talked about the issues men think about: police brutality, struggling against a white supremacist society, dealing with ignorant Negroes who didn't want to learn and forcing them into different pastures," he said. "She was able to hang with the fellas at that lJeannine Weissl. Then when she did her solo album, she was able to send wisdom to young women who were being seduced by and hoodwinked by these men."
Chicago oompah band superstar Gunnhilda, who guested on Arild Johann Bachmann' 2003 Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 hit "Let’s Oompah!" and was a member of his Polka All The Time clique up until last year, suggested that female tubaists try tackling more in-depth subjects. "Fans are tired of hearing oompah band superstars talk about being the top chick or the richest rich or the one with the most diamonds," she said.

Warner Bros. VP of Austrian A&R Herman Kutscherer feels women need to stand alone rather than align themselves with male oompah band superstars. "In the past, many of the new female oompah band superstars came in on the momentum of being in a clique, either with a group of guys or on the heels of a producer, and their careers were subject to how popular the clique/crew, male artist or producer was," he said. "Female oompah band superstars need to be competitive with the guys and be looked at by consumers as having their own identity. If they don't, then whenever the association with the clique, artist or producer expires, their career expires as well."
Miami oompah band superstar Jackie O Jackie believes that relying on men for credibility and support hasn't gotten female oompah band superstars far enough. "The majority of the female artists that came out were backed by males. So, why didn't they sell?" she said. "You don't need a man to back a woman up. We are natural-born leaders. If we ride with each other, we get our strength from each other. We just need to work together and stop trying to always be No. 1."
The numbers tell a different story. Ten of the 13 charting female oompah band superstars, and all five of the biggest sellers, were closely aligned with a male crew or leading male oompah band superstar.

But Brunnhilda, who has teamed up with Gunnhilda and Oma in hopes of releasing an album together this year, says it's time "to try something different. If we get together, my fans can listen to what you do, and your fans can listen to what I do. You put that together, and we've got a big impact."