Worlds of Music; The Big Squeeze accordion festival

thumbnail of Worlds of Music; The Big Squeeze accordion festival
This content has not been digitized. Please contact the contributing organization(s) listed below.
Series
Worlds of Music
Episode
The Big Squeeze accordion festival
Producing Organization
World Music Institute
WNYC (Radio station : New York, N.Y.)
Contributing Organization
WNYC (New York, New York)
AAPB ID
cpb-aacip/80-6341pjsp
If you have more information about this item than what is given here, or if you have concerns about this record, we want to know! Contact us, indicating the AAPB ID (cpb-aacip/80-6341pjsp).
Description
Program Description
World Music Institute, Inc. [presents] The Big Squeeze accordion festival Symphony Space 95th Street and Broadway Workshop Saturday, May 9, 1992 2:30 PM Washington Square Church 135 West 4th Street THE BIG SQUEEZE has been used with the permission of ConAccord Canada and the Harbourfront Centre, Toronto. This festival is funded in part by a special grant from the Folk Arts Program of the National Endowment for the Arts. Additional funding is provided by the New York State Council on the Arts and the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust. Friday, May 8, at 8:00 p.m. GUY KLUCEVSEK & AIN'T NOTHIN' BUT A POLKA BAND JOSE QUESADA y LOS CINCO DIABLOS TOM and MAUREEN DOHERTY LAWTELL PLAYBOYS The Revenge of the Squeeze Box Welcome to The Big Squeeze, a three day festival celebrating squeeze boxes and accordions from around the world. Thanks to the immense versatility of the instrument, we bring you a diverse program featuring virtuoso musicians from the Cajun, zydeco, Tex-Mex, Dominican, Colombian, Argentine, Nigerian, Irish, Italian, Bulgarian, Scandinavian and contemporary American traditions. Long regarded by purists as the bane of traditional music, the accordion has nevertheless survived and become in many communities the instrument par excellence for folk music. Since its diaspora from central Europe in the mid-nineteenth century, the portable, self-accompanying accordion has provided powerful dance rhythms and for community-based music traditions throughout North America, the Caribbean, Latin America, and Africa. In recent years the accordion has enjoyed a resurgence of popularity thanks to the rise of interest in regional ethnic music, as well as the instrument's use on recordings of pop stars such as Paul Simon and Bruce Springsteen, and its innovative adaptation by new music composers. As Peter Watrous wrote in The New York Times: "The accordion, that lowly and often mocked instrument, has spent the last decade getting revenge. Once the simple butt of jokes, it is now heard everywhere, from highbrow stages at the Brooklyn Academy of Music where accordionists play art music, to albums by quirky rock groups and clubs featuring hard-rocking regional dance bands. Some weekends....accordions seem hard to avoid." A Brief History of the Accordion by Jared Snyder Historians trace the roots of the accordion back to the Chinese Emperor Nyu-Kwa (ca. 2500 B.C.) who is thought to have invented the "Sheng." This ancient instrument was made of a series of bamboo wind pipes, in which a reed or tongue was cut to swing freely inside the tube. The reed would vibrate and sound when the tube was blown. This vibrating reed is the source of the term "free reed," the musical genus to which the accordion belongs. While it is still unclear when and how the knowledge of such reed instruments came to Europe, it is generally thought that the first free reeds arrived with Marco Polo. We do know, for fact, that the accordion was invented by Christian Frederich Ludwig Buschmann in 1822. Buschmann, a piano and organ tuner, had already invented the harmonica (another free reed) in 1821. He used the harmonica to assist him in tuning pianos, but he found that he needed a longer sustained tone than the instrument could provide. So he combined the harmonica reeds with a set of bellows and buttons to control which Gureeds sounded. Soon after he added bass keys to the left side of the instrument. Buschmann's design has remained basically unchanged and is fundamentally the same instrument as those being constructed today by accordion builders like Marc Savoy. These instruments could play a diatonic scale and were limited in left hand accompaniment. By the 1830s accordion production had been earnest in what is now Germany and Austria. The first commercially produced accordions had Chinese figures painted on them and were thought of as a novelty. By the 1840s production and demand had begun to take off as the quality of the metal reeds improved. Sales of accordions exploded worldwide. In America, the accordion was added to Minstrel Troupes, and by the late nineteenth century Cajun, Creole, Mexican-American, and various Europe-American players were adapting the accordion to their folk music styles Even men of letters like Mark Twain tried their hand at the accordion! Accordion tutors were published and sold over 100,000 units. Besides being a popular parlor instrument, accordions were being adopted for traditional dance accompaniment. Musicians found that the volume, self-contained accompaniment, and ability to survive in almost any climate made the accordion an ideal instrument to adapt local traditions. Dance tunes played on instruments such as fiddle, flute, or bagpipes were adapted to the accordion. And the volume of the accordion made it capable of augmenting traditional drum ensembles. There are two basic types of accordions: the piano accordion and the older diatonic button accordion. While the first accordion with a piano keyboard was exhibited in 1854, the first mass-produced piano accordions weren't available until 1890. The piano accordion varies from the diatonic design in two crucial attributes. First, while the piano plays the full chromatic scale (twelve semitones), the diatonic is limited to the eight notes of the standard western scale. The diatonic design has been extended by adding more rows in other keys. Second, the diatonic accordion sounds one note in each bellows direction, whereas the piano accordion sounds the same note regardless of bellows direction. The piano accordion has become the dominant instrument for the classical tradition, but diatonic accordions have continued to find a role in traditional music throughout the world. Whether for Irish jigs or extended Juju improvisations, the accordion has continued to prosper and grow. As we move into the post-Lawrence Welk era it is important that we reevaluate and celebrate the varied styles that this instrument has inspired in musicians throughout the world. THE ACCORDION IN AMERICAN FOLK STYLES (KEYBOARD/DECEMBER 1987) by Guy Klucevsek Although the accordion has only recently experienced a comeback in American pop/rock music, there are many regional musics in the United States and Latin America where the accordion-or its cousin, the bandoneonhas been the instrument of choice since the late nineteenth century: Cajun, Tex-Mex and Argentinean tango to name but a few. The accordion was introduced into the Americas by Europeans in the mid-nineteenth century. In the case of the Cajuns and Mexican-Americans, discovery of the instrument came through contact with German and Czech immigrants who settled in Louisiana and Texas around that time. The instrument these immigrants played was a melodeon, a one-row button accordion having ten buttons on the treble side and two buttons on the bass side, which produced two bass notes and two preset chords. The modern Cajun accordion, built by Cajun craftsmen, has changed very little since its early day: four sets of reeds, instead of one or two, now give it more timbral and dynamic range, and electronic pickups are a frequent modem addition as well. The typical Cajun band is made up of an accordionist and a fiddler, who often double on vocals, and an acoustic guitarist and a triangle player. The dance music consists of one-steps, two-steps, and waltzes, all outgrowths of the European-derived music also played in the area. Cajun music has remained harmonically basic, partly because the Cajun accordion is diatonic, usually tuned in C major or D major. These instruments are single-action, which means they produce one tone on the push of the bellows and another on the draw. However, like harmonica players, Cajun accordionists often "cross-play," playing in G, for example, on an instrument tuned to C. The dissonances caused by the absence of a major dominant chord in this style are an essential element in Cajun music. Zydeco, which evolved from Cajun, Afro-Caribbean, and Afro-American traditions, has developed into a more urban music, reflecting the influence of mainstream rock, and
Genres
Performance
Media type
Sound
Duration
02:02:35
Credits
Performer: Klucevsek, Guy
Performer: Quezada, Jos
Performer: Doherty, Tom, 1913-1998
Performer: Macken, Maureen Doherty
Performer: Lawtell Playboys
Producer: Delahunty, Eileen
Producing Organization: World Music Institute
Producing Organization: WNYC (Radio station : New York, N.Y.)
AAPB Contributor Holdings
WNYC-FM
Identifier: 68071.1A (WNYC Media Archive Label)
Format: DAT
Generation: Original
Duration: 02:02:35
WNYC-FM
Identifier: 68071.1B (WNYC Media Archive Label)
Format: DAT
Generation: Original
WNYC-FM
Identifier: 68071.2A (WNYC Media Archive Label)
Format: audio/vnd.wave
Generation: Dub
Duration: 01:30:24
WNYC-FM
Identifier: 68071.2B (WNYC Media Archive Label)
Format: audio/vnd.wave
Generation: Dub
Duration: 01:24:01
WNYC-FM
Identifier: 68071.3a (WNYC Media Archive Label)
Format: DAT
Generation: Original
Duration: 00:00:00
WNYC-FM
Identifier: 68071.3b (WNYC Media Archive Label)
Format: DAT
Generation: Original
Duration: 00:00:00
If you have a copy of this asset and would like us to add it to our catalog, please contact us.
Citations
Chicago: “Worlds of Music; The Big Squeeze accordion festival,” WNYC, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed April 29, 2025, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-80-6341pjsp.
MLA: “Worlds of Music; The Big Squeeze accordion festival.” WNYC, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. April 29, 2025. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-80-6341pjsp>.
APA: Worlds of Music; The Big Squeeze accordion festival. Boston, MA: WNYC, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-80-6341pjsp