Memorial Day Weekend is almost here and that can only mean one thing… festival season! Whether it’s a celebration of Polish culture or crawfish, festivals are the perfect excuse to get outside, have fun, and listen to some great music. Preferably accordion music.
The season kicks off with two big accordion-related festivals this weekend; the first is the National Button Accordion Festival in Bessemer, PA. This festival is the rebirth of the old Fontana Jamboree and features three full days of dancing and jamming to Czech, Polish, Slovenian, Austrian, German, and many other types of music. And despite the name, piano accordionists are welcome.
Meanwhile, the small town of Ennis, TX plays host to the National Polka Festival. The largest Czech heritage festival in the US, the National Polka Festival has all the ingredients for a great summer festival — there’s a parade, a festival king and queen, tons of food (kolaches galore!), and a bunch of bands. Brave Combo, Polka Freak Out, Vrazel’s Polka Band, and many more will be leading folks on multiple dance floors.
I always loved the circus growing up, but I’ll tell you — Ringling Brothers had nothing on the high-energy, French ten-piece Babylon Circus. What started as a ska band in 1995 in Lyon has evolved to include reggae, rock, jazz, and numerous other eclectic influences. But with lyrics in French and English — sometimes both in the same song — addressing social and political issues (like the Iraq war), Babylon Circus isn’t pure diversion. It’s music with a message: get out of your seat and take action, whether it’s marching in the streets or jumping on the dance floor.
Their latest record, Dances of Resistance — released in France in 2004, but just making its way here now — continues to mix the political with the carnival, interspersing full-length songs with brief, circus organ-ridden ditties. Described by some as a French Gogol Bordello, the band has a reputation for electric live shows, as shown in this performance of “J’aurais Bien Voulu”:
This month’s issue of Keyboard Magazine has an excellent profile of one of our favorite polka artists: Big Lou, the Accordion Princess. The piece covers her double life as a geophysicist/accordionist, her squeezebox arsenal, and how she made the transition from Texas honky-tonk piano player to polka princess:
“The only thing that a piano player has to pay attention to is phrasing, or breathing [compressing and expanding the bellows]. That’s kind of a sure giveaway when accordion players listen to piano players who don’t really learn how to play the accordion.”
To learn more about Big Lou, be sure to check out our interview with her (conducted in late 2006). You can also catch her weekly radio show online at 247PolkaHeaven.
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.
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.
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.
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 band’s 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.
Posted May 4th, 2008 in Kids, Profiles · Comments off
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?
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…
It’s time for another installment of “Five Questions” — our occasional interview series with notable personalities in the accordion world.
