Accordionist Guy Klucevsek intones one caveat for those tempted to come to his concerts. “Remember,” he cautions, “this isn’t weird music for polka people, these are polkas for weird people.”
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The light bulb that eventually resulted in “Polka From the Fringe” popped on over Klucevsek’s head in 1986, while listening to pianist Yvar Mikhashoff’s tango collection. Klucevsek began asking his composer friends–Bobby Previte, Christian Marclay, Lois V. Vierk, David Garland, Nicolas Collins–to write “Polkas” for him, imposing only two criteria: that the piece be limited to three minutes and that it be playable in both solo accordion and quartet versions. Given such vague directives, his friends responded with a wild variety of firsts: the first 12-tone polka, the first polka in 7/8 meter, the first polka with manipulated-turntable solo, the first computer-assisted polka, the first deconstructionist polka, and my favorite–the only polka ever written that requires the band to take off their shirts and perform on Kleenex boxes. Five or six of the polkas, he says, “you could drop into a dance setting and maybe only raise one eyebrow. The rest would stop everyone dead in their tracks.”
Klucevsek came to the polka early and honestly. Born near Pittsburgh into a Slovenian family, he grew up playing accordion at picnics and weddings, though his teacher also gave him a broad base in classical accordion arrangements. “I was playing Brahms’s Violin Concerto, the Tchaikovsky First Piano Concerto, Bach inventions, Scarlatti sonatas on the accordion. I can’t say it was always in the best taste, but it gave me chops. The Brahms was pretty wild.” Entering music school at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Klucevsek disowned Slovenian music for fear he would lose credibility. “It was bad enough I was playing accordion.”
“I try to explain to people who dance to polkas that by creating an alternative collection I’m not trying to negate what’s already there, I’m trying to add to it in a different way. But some people see it as a rejection of the traditional form. I’m working in the only language of polka I can work in, my compositional style and my performing style. I couldn’t be a traditional polka player at this point.”
