Northern California has had its fair share of accordion festivals over the years, so it was only a matter of time before Southern California got into the act. The first Los Angeles Accordion Festival is a three-day event running from May 30th to June 1st at Eagles Hall in Los Angeles.

Designed to showcase some of L.A.’s finest new accordion talent, there’ll be four or five bands performing each night with diverse styles ranging from Irish to Tex-Mex, Cajun to Rockabilly, and nearly everything in-between. On Saturday, May 31st, there’ll also be an accordion workshop on the three-row button accordion led by Otono Lujan of Conjunto Los Pochos, accordion instructor at the Eagle Rock Music Studio. For more information — including a full list of artists performing — check the festival website or the listing on our calendar.

Today’s links are sponsored by the great state of Texas, home of Flaco Jimenez, Brave Combo, and the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders.

• Big Squeeze Semifinals Video
  Fox 7 in Austin did a short piece on the semifinals of Texas Folklife’s “Big Squeeze” competition, held in Austin on Sunday. The two finalists will face off at the Accordion Kings and Queens concert in Houston next month.
• Tejano Conjunto Festival Photos
  Flickr user thegiantagave has a great set of photos from last weekend’s Tejano Conjunto Festival in San Antonio, including shots of Eva Ybarra, Mingo Saldivar, and Santiago Jimenez, Jr.
• PopMatters Review: Joe Ely and Joel Guzman
  PopMatters reviews Live Cactus! a new, live release by a pair of Texas music legends — Joe Ely and accordionist Joel Guzman. The review includes a blurry video of the pair performing “Letter to Laredo” at Town Hall in New York City.

It’s time for another installment of “Five Questions” — our occasional interview series with notable personalities in the accordion world.

Today, we’re talking to Skyler Fell, owner of the Accordion Apocalypse Repair Shop in San Francisco. A professionally trained accordion repairwoman, Skyler offers repairs, parts, lessons, and free advice out of her humble shop in Hunter’s Point. Accordion Apocalypse has become a Bay Area accordion hub, hosting bi-weekly jams and shows by touring bands and wild circuses. She also plays in a couple bands herself: the Hobo Gobbelins and the Accordion Apocalypse Circus Sideshow.

When and why did you start playing the accordion?

I started playing accordion when I was around 20 years old, after walking into Boaz Accordions in Berkeley. Feeling inspired by live circus bands featuring fierce and independent women with a hardcore edge in Europe and the Bay Area, I decided to have a go at the accordion. What has happened since has been a truly magical and eye-opening journey.

Continue reading ‘Five Questions: Skyler Fell’ »

The future of the accordion is now; at least, it is for these young accordion bands readers sent us after our post on a kids accordion band photo from the 1930s. Each of these bands is helping promote the accordion to a whole new generation.

• Showstoppers Accordion Orchestra and Dancers
  Founded in 1970 and led by Rosita Lee Latulippe, the Showstoppers Orchestra give the students of the Latulippe’s music school the opportunity to travel and perform. Over the years, the band has performed across the country and even overseas; last year, they performed at the Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage during the Coupe Mondiale.
• Tameside Junior Accordion Band
  Founded in 1992 by Betty Pollard, teaching and instruments are free for members of the Tameside Band, supporting their philosophy that money shouldn’t prevent children from learning music. The Band won the elementary group championship at this year’s UK Accordion Championships.
• Cool Cats Accordion Band
  The Cool Cats are part of Terry Bell’s accordion and keyboard studio (United Teachers of Music) in Independence, Missouri. Playing everything from Bach to boogie, some of the bands alumni have gone on to compete nationally and internationally.

I’m sure there are plenty of other young accordion bands and orchestras out there. If we left yours out, leave us a comment and let us know.

Not sure how I missed this, but the April issue of Paste Magazine has a couple features on the accordion. The first, “Squeezebox Redux: The World’s Dorkiest Instrument Earns Hipster Cred”, notes the accordion’s recent rise to prominence in the indie rock world. One label head suggests that “the more bands that use accordions, the more [new] bands will be inspired to try it themselves.” DeVotchKa’s Tom Hagerman also has a good quote:

“The accordion can quickly color a piece of music into a much darker or even grotesque sort of tune… I think in pop music it tends to make things sound a little anachronistic, in a good way.”

Paste also published their “Ultimate Accordion Playlist”. The list is, again, indie rock-centric, and features a number of the bands we’ve covered here (They Might Be Giants, the Decemberists, Gogol Bordello, Arcade Fire, etc.). Any notable omissions?

Rock stars of tomorrow, uploaded by ‘56 Mojo

As we’ve seen before, I have a soft spot for these old photos of kids accordion bands. (This one apparently dates from around 1935.) But while these bands seemed to be a dime a dozen in those days, I’d really like to see photos of modern-day kids accordion bands. Anybody know of one?

As someone who comes from a long line of farmers, I’m no stranger to tractors and farm equipment. But I never thought of using their sounds in music, which is why I’m not a famous avant-garde musician like Finnish accordionist Kimmo Pohjonen. He toured four UK farms and recorded the sounds of tractors, milking machines, threshers, and more, so he could tweak, loop, and sample them with his MIDI accordion for his project, “Earth Machine Music.”

“When you amplify and equalise those sounds, and you have a great PA, you can suddenly hear music and rhythms. I’m sure people who come to the concerts will be surprised at what great sounds they have. These are kind of forgotten sounds. Everybody knows them, and everybody knows accordion sounds, too - but not like this.”

Next month, Pohjonen will revisit those farms for a series of concerts in which he’ll perform new music he has composed specifically for each venue. Local farmers will even “play along” with Pohjonen, firing up their tractors and machinery during the performance. There’s even a documentary film in the works. I wonder if it will spawn a whole new genre of agricultural accordionists…

Update: I found a YouTube clip of Pohjonen discussing the project, as well as a piece in the Telegraph.

After spending the weekend adding concerts and festivals to our accordion events calendar, I’ll highlight two events going on this week. First, classical accordionist Lidia Kaminska performs Rimsky-Korsakov and Piazzolla with the Haddonfield Symphony in Camden, NJ. Yesterday’s Philadelphia Inquirer had a excellent profile of Lidia and her quest to rehabiliate the accordion’s image. “I don’t want people to think of accordion only as a polka or wedding instrument. I want people to have knowledge - that it is a serious classical instrument.”

Meanwhile, down on the Bayou, this weekend’s Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival features some of the biggest names in Cajun/Zydeco. Performers include Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys, the Pine Leaf Boys, Geno Delafose, Keith Frank, and Corey Ledet, but the main attraction is the crawfish. There’ll be a crawfish cookoff, a crawfish eating contest, the crowning of the Crawfish Queen, and, of course, crawfish races. Please, no wagering.

One of the benefits of having a MySpace page for Let’s Polka is it helps us keep tabs on tons of artists that might otherwise fly under our radar. Here’s are a few that have recently caught our ear:

• Piñata Protest
  We’ve seen a few punk/polka bands, even some punk/zydeco, but San Antonio’s Piñata Protest is the first punk/Tejano band we’ve come across. An answer to the traditional Tejano music its members grew up hating, this is what would happen “if Ramon Ayala and Sid Vicious had a baby.”
• Amber Lee and the Anomalies
  Accordionist Amber Lee Baker, accompanied by banjo and fiddle, sings of rodeo clowns and whaler’s wives while leading this charming acoustic group from Anna’s old stomping grounds (Santa Rosa, CA). Their debut CD, Estuaries, is due out next month.
• Accordion Death Squad
  Armed with an excellent name, the Accordion Death Squad plays “gypsy music from Ratsylvania,” which is apparently near Charlottesville, Virginia. Swirling accordion and violin guaranteed to keep you dancing.

Are you in a band we need to hear? Add us on MySpace.

Sunday’s edition of the Los Angeles Times had an interesting piece on the accordion’s role in classical music and film. It covers the instrument’s history and mechanics before focusing on classical accordionist Nick Ariondo, composer Samuel Zyman, and prolific soundtrack accordionist Frank Marocco. Ariondo explains what makes the accordion so expressive — and difficult to play:

“When you see the piano side of it, complete with white and black notes, you expect to see hammers, not valves. But this is a push-and-pull reed instrument. When you pull out on the accordion, you’re sucking air into it. It sounds like a harmonica. The bellows is like the bow on the violin. It’s very difficult to master.”

I detect a somewhat snooty tone in the article, particularly the emphasis that the “accordion is not just an instrument of the people.” Then again, maybe I’m just hurt because Frank Marocco’s comment — “most of the accordion players never took it much further… they learned to play a little polka, a little waltz, a march, and they’re satisfied” — hits a little too close to home.