Poland’s Motion Trio has a simple goal: to change the way the accordion is perceived as an instrument. Arguably, they’ve already succeeded, exploring soundscapes far beyond what most people typically associate and experience with their instrument. Their excellent album Play-Station, for example, reimagined the electronic beeps of the video game era with only acoustic accordions. The trio’s founder, Janusz Wojtarowicz, states their mission best:
“Accordion traditionalists have run out of ideas, and it is our goal to extract notes from the accordion which have never been heard before, to develop completely new sounds and forms, and transfer them onto CD as well as of course to present them live.”
With less than a week left in our accordion advent calendar, we turn to a country not typically known for its accordion players: Nigeria. I.K. Dairo was a pioneer of juju, a popular Nigerian music that evolved from Yoruba percussion. Dairo introduced new sounds to juju, adding Latin rhythms, electric guitar, and his ten-button accordion to the mix. He toured the world, was awarded an MBE by Queen Elizabeth in 1963, and extended juju’s appeal while deepening its connections to its Yoruba roots.
It’s Friday… let’s put on some party music! The rhythms of Colombian vallenato, by way of Los Angeles — that’s the sound of Very Be Careful. Vallenato is a traditional folk music of Colombia that typically features the accordion, caja vallenata (drum), and guacharaca. The Very Be Careful quintet adds bass, cowbell, and a relentless parranda (party) style that few can resist.
Barely thirty years old, Lidia Kaminska has already set herself apart as one of the world’s premier classical accordionists. Her chamber music, concerto, and solo performances explore the accordion’s complex and expressive range, and her repertoire includes a broad spectrum of classical, contemporary, and avant-garde music. Recently, she’s taken up the bandoneon — making her debut this past Spring at New York’s Lincoln Center — and has researched the works of Astor Piazzolla intensely. This clip, however, finds her playing the bayan on a contemporary piece by Jaroslaw Bester, leader of the Bester Quartet.
Dreamland Faces is a Minnesota duo combining our household’s two favorite instruments — the accordion and musical saw. Together, Karen Majewicz (who worked for Hohner doing repairs) and Andy McCormick play enchanting and haunting music that evokes a bygone era, when flappers flapped and films were still silent. With earnest, warbling vocals and an old-time jazz sensibility, all that’s missing is the sound of a needle making its way across a dusty record.
For day #16 on our accordion advent calendar, we have a track from one of my favorite holiday albums, Brave Combo’s It’s Christmas, Man! Brave Combo has been creatively bending genres for more than 25 years, and this album is no different. It’s filled with eclectic, twisted renditions of Christmas classics: a ska version of “The Christmas Song, a samba “O Christmas Tree”, and more. If you’re sick of hearing the same old holiday songs over and over again (sorry Burl Ives), this is your cure.
You may think of Grace Jones as a model, a disco diva, an actress, or a tempestuous artiste, but probably not as an accordion player. And yet here’s a clip of Jones performing the strangest version of the classic French chanson “La Vie on Rose” I’ve ever heard. Of course, she isn’t really playing the accordion so much as using it as a prop, though she certainly strikes an intimidating pose. (Watch her performance of Astor Piazzolla’s “Libertango” for an example of her excellence at accordion-holding, if not playing.)
So far this month, we’ve focused entirely on the accordion; but today we turn to its expressive cousin, the bandoneon. And you can’t talk about the bandoneon without talking about Astor Piazzolla. Father of the nueva tango, Piazzolla revolutionized classic Argentine tango by incorporating elements of classical music and jazz, harmonies and dissonance, and new instrumentation (e.g. electric guitar, saxophone). This stirring performance of “Hora Cero” comes from the last performance of Piazzolla’s New Tango Sex-Tet.
I couldn’t do the accordion advent calendar without featuring the group that first inspired me to pick up the accordion: They Might Be Giants. For more than 25 years, John Linnell and John Flansburgh have been pumping out clever, quirky pop for adults and children alike. Linnell’s accordion isn’t featured as prominently as it was in the old days, but this bouncy instrumental (released via their online TMBG Clock Radio) is a shows he can still squeeze. It was also the first song on the first mix CD Anna made for me after we started dating.
As we cross the halfway point in our accordion advent calendar, we highlight a track from Chinese classical accordionist Zhang Guoping. Zhang comes from a family of professional accordion players — his father was president of the Chinese Association of Accordionists — and has been trained in the Western classical tradition, becoming a master of the free-bass accordion. Zhang returns to his roots with this song, an old melody calling to mind the sound of the sheng, the accordion’s Chinese predecessor.
