Polka which hosts/produces the Grammy Awards, announced that it was eliminating the polka category. The Academy's official reason for eliminating the polka award was “to ensure the awards process remains representative of the current musical landscape.” The Academy's decision stems from the declining number of popular polka albums considered for an award in recent years. For example, out of the five polka albums nominated for an award in 2006, only one album was widely distributed in the mainstream. Polka The polka is originally a Czech dance and genre of dance music familiar throughout Europe and the Americas. It originated in the
Polonaise-Fantaisie (Chopin) and Vladimir Horowitz had been including it in their programs some decades earlier. It is intimately indebted to the polonaise for its metre, much of its rhythm, and some of its melodic character, but the fantaisie is the operative formal paradigm (Samson, 1988), and Chopin is said to have referred initially to the piece only as a Fantasy. Parallels with the Fantaisie in F minor include the work's overall tonality, A-flat, the key of its slower middle section, B major, and the motive of the descending fourth. Jeffrey Kallberg has suggested that the Polonaise-Fantaisie represents a change in Chopin's style