It’s National Accordion Awareness Month in the US of A.
Frankly I’ve always been aware of accordions, especially the piano variety, but hey-ho! Have a lovely time y’all!
It comes right between prostate cancer awareness month and tapeworm awareness month, right?
No doubt an accordian, in fact any variety of squeezebox, is a thing of beauty to anyone who is properly armed.
Blowed up real good! In fact, blowed up two of them.
djm
I don’t want to be aware. They always make me think of Steve Urkel.
I’ve always thought of it as a Public Safety thing. If you’re unaware, the payback can be a world of hurt.
But then, arguably, there’s pipes in general. Look out!!!
Hmph. When the revolution comes, you haters will be the first ones against the wall. And we’ll play Lady of Spain for you first.
Check this guy out, though, seriously.
Who is he talking to?
To God. He is praying I don’t find him before he finishes the piece he is playing. 
djm
Wow. Just wow.
I never realized how much accordions could sound like pipe organs. Check this one out too
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVbuIZ-5-8o&mode=related&search=
Any instrument can be a weapon of mass destruction in the wrong hands.
Well, I know Mr. Bloomfield is being sarcastic but I thought that was really great.
Great minds must think alike—I was going to post this too. I sort of hate that piece but it was fun to watch on the accordion. Apparently Alexander Dmitriev, who plays this piece, is the father of Vitaly Dmitriev who played the piece in the first link.
I don’t know what is wrong with you guys who only like an accordion if there is a naked girl playing it. I won’t go into all the great accordion music in the world and all the great players, but here is one fellow I hadn’t known about until Big Davy sent me a tune—Angus Lyon. Some of his music is pretty experimental or something, but he plays a lot of things I really enjoy. This is a clip from The Penguin (Reels):
http://www.anguslyon.co.uk/mp3/Long%20Road%20Samples/Samples_The%20Penguin%20(Reels).mp3
Long Road (Angus Lyon solo) (KRL 1999 CDLDL1305)
Here he is playing a too short clip from Sue’s Celebration with Ruaridh Campbell on fiddle:
http://www.anguslyon.co.uk/mp3/Simple%20Tricks%20Samples/Samples_Sue’s%20Celebration.mp3
Simple Tricks (KRL 2001 - CDLDL1310)
http://www.myspace.com/anguslyon
Three tunes here—the last two get well into the alternative sort of thing, but I like the first a lot.
Okay, I don’t know what more I can do for the poor accordion.
Actually, I wasn’t being sarcastic at all. I was truly blown away. My thought was: wow, 25 years or more of hard, dedicated work to get to this point. Just Amazing what the human mind and spirit is capable of through dedication and practice. It was particularly impressive in that it really brought out the d-minor fuge, which is such an awe-inspiring piece of music in the first place. (The bumblebee thing is just a party-trick, as meaningful musically as spinning plates on a stick, imho.)
Oh no! I never heard you say “Just wow.” before. It didn’t seem to be you somehow 
. I am sorry I made such an assumption, and thank you for correcting what I said in such a courteous way. I also thought that one could really hear what was going on in a very wonderful way. I agree that the bumblebee is quite silly-----the sort of thing I enjoy watching someone play just for fun, but not listening to. I can’t imagine someone putting it on a CD—you’d be gritting your teeth waiting for it to come every time you played it.
It was particularly impressive in that it really brought out the d-minor fuge, which is such an awe-inspiring piece of music in the first place.
God almighty, yes. The passage at about 4:20 in the video where the melodic lines all coil up and go slamming into a Bb chord is one of the greatest moments in the history of music.
As I’ve opined here before, I think the accordion has such a terrible rep in America because of ethnic prejudice and class snobbery. The accordion is the instrument of immigrants. It’s used in all that music our grandparents from the old country used to love: happy Austro-German polkas, Myron Floren, and all that. Or cheesy Italian pizza-parlor music. French musette waltzes. Bouncy norteno and tejano music from Mexico. All those stupid diddley tunes from Ireland. For several generations, the accordion was all about nostalgia or embarrassment, depending on how you felt about your heritage, or else revulsion if you didn’t like a particular ethnic group. But listen to all that stuff! It’s all so cool!
BTW, one of the comments in that Tejano video I linked says: “Anybody noticed they aren’t playing Accordions, but Harmonica’s? Accordions are Chromatic and got more basses. These Harmonica’s are Diatonic (the same system as in a harpoon).” So now you know.
Good lord, that’s hilarious. I might use that for my next siggy…hey, lookee that!
Nonsense. You can’t run away from the general distaste for boxes by blaming it on social biggotry or snobbery. They get dumped on not for the music played on them, but for the crappy sound they make. The wetter they get, the worse they suck. And I mean “suck” in a literal sense; they suck the sound out of every other instrument in the room. That is what has made them the target of disgust from every othermusician for generations.
Some of the most biting commentary I’ve heard about accordians came from Joe Burke, who’s no slouch on the wheezers. He’s heard it all, and knows that much of it is well deserved. While I can appreciate the great skill and dexterity required to operate a box, I just can’t get past the lack of clarity or enunciation of them. You can’t compare their sound to a real organ. A free reed sounds nothing like the true clean envelope of a true reed & pipe organ. Even a mouth organ has a more pleasing sound.
djm
The “general distaste for boxes” is primarily an American phenomenon, and I do maintain that it has a lot to do with younger generations wanting to shake loose from older traditions. I think this is why the accordion is generally relegated to folk music in this country, whereas in Eastern Europe it’s a serious classical instrument.
I just can’t get past the lack of clarity or enunciation of them. You can’t compare their sound to a real organ. A free reed sounds nothing like the true clean envelope of a true reed & pipe organ. Even a mouth organ has a more pleasing sound.
De gustibus non est disputandum, but did you actually listen to that Vitaly Dimitriev video I linked?
c’mon…
Accordians are lovely instruments, cf. Solas (John Williams) !
Some basics:
→ 3+ octaves
→ dynamic range (ability to play soft/loud).
→ melody + backing in 1 instrument
Perhaps they have such a bad rap is that they’re tough to play well. At amateur/enthusiast sessions, most new players play too loud.
In the right hands, they’re gems.
I agree with Ro3b on the “American” phenomenon.
Deplorable muck.
djm