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The accordion's comeback
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Newsday (Nassau Edition), The accordion's comeback >>
If you think of the bellows of an accordion as the 19th century equivalent of Marshall amp, you can start to imagine why the instrument spread across the world, muscling into the folk music of country after country.
While the accordion's ancestry can be traced back centuries to China, its name was patented in Paris in 1829 by a Viennese instrument maker, although a German craftsman created an instrument several years earlier that more closely resembled the modern accordion.
By the century's end, factories were mass-producing accordions, so much so that some observers wondered if the instrument would wipe out traditional music. Instead, the accordion took its place along side other instruments and became the centerpiece of several genres. When immigrants came to the Americas, they brought their squeezeboxes with them -- from Argentina to Cape Breton.
During the 20th century, the accordion rose and fell in popularity. Like many of the traditions it was a part of, the accordion came to be considered old-fashioned, or worse, "uncool." What other instrument could have a fan club that calls itself the Closet Accordion Players of America?
With the rediscovery of ethnic and regional music, the accordion is regaining respect ability. Several recent releases show that it is artistically, at least, in good hands.
The Motion Trio from Poland is composed of three accordion players who come from a conservatory background but played on the streets while they attended the Krakow Music Academy.
In the liner notes to its' CD, "Pictures From the Street" (Indigo), the group's leader, Janusz Wojtarowicz, said, "Accordion traditionalists have run out of ideas, and it is our goal to extract notes from the accordion that have never been heard before."
Wojtarowicz said the trio wants "to open the gate of concert ... to make the presence of the accordion in concert halls as natural as the presence of violin or piano."
Despite the talk of experimentalism and classical music, the songs on "Pictures" are strongly rhythmic and fun, by-product of the trio's street performances.
Wojtarowicz said that playing on the street "was a great... The street taught us a lot: flair, ability of solving problems, being pushy." Their album, he said, "is a story about the places, people and, first of all, about the emotions we felt playing street music."
Another unexpected arrival to the United States is an album of little-known, accordion-driven music from Argentina called chamame. Unlike Argentina's tango, chamame is an upbeat music that is typically played at dances in the country's rural north east.
As played by Change Spasiuk on his "Tarefero de Mis Pagos" (Piranha) the ordinarily earthy chamame can be elegant and ethereal. Spasiuk plays peppy six-eighths-rhythm tunes as he would for dancing couples, but he also plays compositions that change rhythm and dynamics like classical pieces.
He said that while chamame continues to flourish in Argentina's northeast, it has never been considered as prestigious as tango.
"It is not my goal or my main purpose, but I feel a kind of happiness when this music can be heard in places that up to now were not expected to be places to play chamame."
Although the accordion has long been a part of Irish traditional music, the accordionist Sharon Shannon helped open the scene to music from other Celtic cultures and beyond. Her eponymous 1991 debut was the highest-selling traditional Irish record, yet it included tunes from Portugal and Cajun country.
Shannon's last two records, on the Nashville-based label Compass, have linked the genres of Irish traditional and American country. Now, Compass has reissued "Spellbound," a retrospective of Shannon's earlier career that showcases her lovely forays outside Irish music and her high-spirited sets of old Irish jigs and reels.
In this century, digital technology threatens to eclipse the electric guitar's pre-eminence in popular music, but the dexterous and emotionally resonant playing of these emerging artists ensures we'll hear a few more verses before the accordion's final coda.
-Marty Lipp 03/27/05
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