Accordion Crimes
Mardi Gras in New Orleans was on February 16 this year, and Is Black Music celebrated with a slamming accordion playlist featuring zydeco musicians past and present. The accordion is one of the most awesome instruments ever invented. After reading Annie Proulx’s book Accordion Crimes, I realised that the accordion is the ultimate instrument of folk music.
It is tuned slightly sharp, which gives it a laser-like cutting-edge sound. If you ever take one apart and look inside you see what resembles a large blues harmonica. That’s because the casing of the reeds in the accordion are identical to those on the harmonica, which are often referred to as harmonica combs. Accordions are essentially large harmonicas.
And harmonica players are as welcome at a classical concert rehearsal as a Black Republican at a Kamala Harris rally. Both accordions and harmonicas resist the homogeneity of the classical world. An accordion is likely to rip to sheds a stuffy old classical piece and divulge its sectarian pretensions.
What also makes them one of the folkiest instruments ever is their mobility. Most accordions are small and light enough to put on a donkey or meet the strictest economy airline hand luggage requirements.
But while accordions are too wild and scary for today’s conventional Black music industry, in New Orleans there are practitioners of the art of zydeco who haven’t forgotten how to squeeze the funk out of it.
