Even in Texas, where everything’s bigger, the little guys can still win one. In the latest case, the little guys are the nearly 40 private music museums across the Lone Star State. Their defeated foe? A plan backed by Governor Greg Abbott, Austin politicians, and the state’s preservation board to build a taxpayer-funded Texas State Music Museum.
As the Houston Chronicle gleefully reports, two bills to establish the state-run museum died in the legislature late last month. That news pleased those who have long been developing their own Museum of American Music History in Houston. But the failure to create an official state music museum also gave the owners and operators of Texas’s numerous small, independent music museums cause to celebrate.
The Chronicle noted the many musical styles and influences that make up Texas’s “rich music history”—everything from German polka to Mexican folk to country to blues. “That history was developed in small towns and cities in every corner of Texas, where small museums celebrate and highlight that past,” according to the paper. “There’s Turkey, where the Bob Wills Museum is located. And San Benito’s Freddy Fender Museum and the Buddy Holly Center in Lubbock, along with Arlington’s Texas Blues Museum and the Light Crust Doughboys Hall of Fame and Museum in Hillsboro.”
But as plans began for the big state museum, these community museums spotted a threat. Austin, with its hip indie music scene and “Keep Austin Weird” ethos, was seen as encroaching on claims of musical tradition in other parts of the state. As host city of the annual South By Southwest conference and festivals, which draw an international music, film, and tech industry crowd, the city already dominates the state’s modern music scene. Who wants to give Austin even more influence over Texas culture? The opening of a central museum would have also made it harder for museums of narrower or niche focus to remain open.
One such museum is the Texas Polka Music Museum in Schulenburg. Based on its website, there’s nothing flashy or interactive about this museum. But it does appear to be run by its board of directors, an earnest group of polka-loving Texans who are keeping alive the tradition passed down from their German, Polish, and Czech immigrant ancestors. The TPMM opened in 2010 in a historic building in downtown Schulenburg, serving to conserve polka history, showcase polka bands and DJs, and organize an annual polka festival.
And don’t forget the Tex Ritter Museum at the Texas Country Music Hall of Fame in Carthage, in Panola County.
A small-town museum is as American as apple pie, and it’s why The Scrapbook is dancing a polka on the grave of the Texas State Music Museum.
