Hello everyone! This may sound silly, it may sound fun, but to keep things light let me tell you about a celebration held in June! Did you know that the month of June is Accordion Awareness month? Well now you do! Here is a bit of a fun fact, an aunt and uncle of mine each played the accordion, but somehow, unfortunately, I didn’t get the accordion playing gene.
Accordions are portable instruments comprised of reeds, bellows, keys, and buttons, but how did these instruments come to be? For the most part, many credit C. Friedrich L. Buschmann of Berlin for the invention of the Handaoline, patented 1822, while others credit Cyrill Demian of Vienna who patented the Accordion in 1829. The Handaoline essentially is an early form of accordion with keys to make individual notes, but no buttons or keys to create chords, hence why Buschmann is viewed as the creator of this strange instrument.
Essentially to make it easy and simple, the way that an accordion works is as follows: inside the case there are small metal tongues called reeds lined up alongside valves. When air is forced through the valves, the reeds vibrate which creates sound. This is a simple explanation, but there are generally two types of accordions. Some of the earliest accordions are referred to as “single action” meaning that one button creates two notes when pulling and drawing. There are also “double action” accordions, in which two reeds are tuned to the same note, making treble and bass notes available with a single key. In this category there are also piano accordions with the piano style keyboards that most of us are familiar with.
Throughout Europe, the accordion was adapted and adopted into various music styles, and the accordion itself began to make its way around the world. The Museum of Fine Arts Boston has in their collection a postcard depicting two Japanese girls playing with an accordion from the late Meiji Period. After it reached Asia, it was only a matter of time until they reached the Americas.
Accordions didn’t make it the New World until the mid-19th century when German immigrants introduced the instrument to those living in Latin America. This instrument, amongst other accordion family instruments, is still prevalent in traditional music of Latin and South America. In Mexico, the accordion is still used in mariachi and Banda performances, with variations of the instrument used in tango and milonga music of Argentina.
So this June, enjoy some accordion music, bust out your own, or simply brush up on your accordion based history and maybe see what other accordion family instruments peak your curiosity!
