@catsalad
Pirates never played accordions
š“āā ļøš«šŖ
(Because they hadnāt been invented yet)
Accordions were invented during the 1800s Industrial Revolution at the same time as the telegraph, steam engine and the typewriter
100 years after the Golden Age of Piracy 1600sā1700s
So every pirate movie with an accordionist is a science fiction movie with a time-travel sub plot šāļø
yeah... i go through this at every ren faire, pirate movie, etc. showing a guitar. what we'd recognize as a guitar was a 19th century evolution of earlier instruments... i wasn't a wizard in history but do know that the renaissance was pre-1800s...
š¤Æ
Despite your username, I had to look this up and it's true. Absolutely wild.
there truly are experts in every single thing on Mastodon (not sarcastic).
@Jeanniewarner @davidr @AccordionBruce @catsalad
Yes, the concertina was the invention of Sir Charles Wheatstone, patented 1829, public launch 1835, so Tom the cabin boy couldn't have used one to play the Trumpet Hornpipe for Captain Pugwash[1] on The Black Pig. 3:O(> There were lots of competing designs, so as with computers: "Any student of the concertina has to choose between ten incompatible operating systems."[2] 3:O))>
[1] Pugwash is coeval with this moose!
[2] https://www.kcl.ac.uk/the-concertina-celebrating-sir-charles-wheatstones-invention-at-kings
@Jeanniewarner @Cadbury_Moose @davidr @catsalad
Youāre right!
Outside my areas but seems like the great Pirate Queen Zheng Yi Sao might have had South East Asian free reeds (variants inspired early accordions) onboard
And they would likely/definitely have been around on shore
Now thatās a story to be told! šŖ š“āā ļø š
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zheng_Yi_Sao
@Jeanniewarner @Cadbury_Moose @davidr @catsalad
We were just talking about the Chinese sheng, mouth organ last week
https://mastodon.social/@AccordionBruce/116340900565911951
Where I linked to an article but didnāt include the authorās name (making it hard to search up)
How the sheng became a harp,
by the very cool š
Carmel Raz
Sound Studies
An Interdisciplinary Journal
Volume 6, 2020 - Issue 2: Special Issue: Sonic Things: Knowledge Formation in Flux
https://doi.org/10.1080/20551940.2020.1794648
Title refers to the harmonica mouth-harp not šŖ
@AccordionBruce @catsalad dude..
That's off the charts cool trivia.
@adam_wysokinski @catsalad
The Jungian telegraph needs to be included at least
Developed by the same guy as the English concertina, Charles Wheatstone
He also measured the speed of light, did that circuit thing, and invented 3-D glasses šµāš«
(Which IIRC is the title of a #JohnWyndham #SciFi short story in The Seeds of Time which defined the term.)
@AccordionBruce @catsalad It fucks me up knowing that the bodhrƔn was invented in the 19th century, cus it feels like something that must have been around forever.
Granted it does depend on who you ask, there are people who insist it's ancient, but I think it's a question of how rigorously you define it. Like frame drums are probably older than dirt, but we're talking about a specific type of frame drum.
@Owlor @catsalad
The origin-stories of traditions are some of my favourite things
Like ~every~ tradition has to have been started by real live people just sitting around one day
The accordion is particularly interesting because it gained real global popularity after the 1860s or so
And recording started in the 1890s
So we have records of people who might have known the very first players of some ātraditionalā styles
@Owlor @catsalad
Folk glorious of the 1800s and early 1900s hated the squeezeboxes
So they never talked about them or recorded them or interviewed any of the players
So folklorists canāt do something similar to a comparative analysis of todayās research on the impact of the boombox 100 years later
Mostly it makes you conscious of the question of the historical origins of āauthenticityā and how it was used as a sales-pitch, or simply nostalgic amnesia
@Owlor @catsalad
So when I learned Bill Monroe invented #Bluegrass at the same time be-boppers invented modern #jazzā¦ š· šŖ
But one music still projects as āmodernā while the other has an aura thatās more and more antique and folkloric
Monroeās mom played #accordion and was a really good fiddle player, and as far as I can tell, no interviewer ever asked him about that š
(The key question? āWhat kind? And what repertoire?ā Because a button accordion wouldāve indicated an older tradition)
@catsalad @Owlor @AccordionBruce
Edmonton has a huge annual Heritage Festival, with 100+ tents with food, dance, music put together by cultural associations representing and demonstrating the peoples that form our city. Our family makes jokes about the accordion because itās the ātraditionalā instrument of *so* many of them. A new, exciting instrument developed and spread in the heyday of spreading nationalism sentiment suddenly made ancient.
@matthewskelton @Theosoreass @catsalad
They gave Spencer Tracy a Hurdy Gurdy in Captains Courageous
Which is funny, because Kipling features an #accordion in the book, set contemporaneous to its 1897 publication
We can guess the era because the rich kidās dad is a railway magnate and steams over to pick him up
https://youtu.be/sXDasPDVJWM
@BoredomFestival @catsalad
There was lively chatter on message boards when the young adult novel series about Mary āJackyā Faber featured her playing a little Accordion
They start in 1801 which puts them before the 1829 development of the first accordions
It wasnāt featured much after that until the very last book (published 14 years later, two years after the author died) when she played it again, almost as if he was tossing one to all of the people who complained šŖ š
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Jack_(novel)
@AccordionBruce
This makes me love pirate movies even more.
@sellathechemist @catsalad
Alan Lomax went to Europe in the 1950s to escape the McCarthy era
And he seems to have come back with a deep hatred of the Accordion
He called it a āpestiferous instrumentā
And seemed to apply a generic filter based on the fact that it had chased around fiddle and bagpipe traditions in many parts of Europe
Not unearned. But not helpful
@antares @sellathechemist @catsalad
Thereās people who study just Lead Belly and Iām no expert
But I think Lead Bellyās only five known āwindjammerā šŖ recordings were made late in his life in the 40s by Mos Asch
Theyāre all on this set
https://folkways.si.edu/leadbelly
Not sure he owned an accordion when Alan Lomax knew him
Heād picked one up again, maybe in nostalgia for the instrument he learned first back in 1909
Or because he thought it would sell records? Who knows? Nobody asked š
Lead Belly: The Smithsonian Folkways Collection, the first career-spanning box set dedicated to the American music icon, is a 5 CD, 140-page, large-format book featuring 5 hours of music with 16 unreleased tracks. The limited-edition poster and t-shirt package has sold out. Lead Belly is āthe ā¦
@antares @sellathechemist @catsalad
Ironically all the folklorists wanted to hear was his Mexican 12 string guitar, which wasnāt traditional at all
They never asked about his little āwindjammerā button accordion
Or the Black square-dance tradition it was played for that dated back to before the Civil War
And that his accordion style predated his 12 string guitar, and blues guitar in general
But nobody knew or thought to ask š¤·š½āāļø
@antares @sellathechemist @catsalad
Lomax is one of the people who did a lot, with a lot of help by people who deserve more credit
So like most āgreat menā he can take the criticisms
And if the work is valid the man will not mind
I donāt even really have that much problem with him
He seems to have been really opinionated, and wrong on some things, which led people to argue with him
But heās dead now so we donāt have to yell about those same things anymore
Thatās just science
@sellathechemist @catsalad
I didnāt know there was a box set of all #Piazzollaās recordings?
I read one of his biographies, and talked to somebody who dealt with some of his manuscripts
It sounded like he just compulsively composed (for the money)
Discarding pieces like a Oblivion without intending to record them well for posterity
(They had to twist his arm on that one)
My acquaintance made it sound like there was so much material no one could ever deal with it
#tango #bandoneon
@sellathechemist @catsalad
Signed too āš¼
Wonder how much it overlaps with this ten CD set of his I found on one particularly good šŖ record shopping day?
This matching historical #tango set may have been near some French musette compilations too
Lots of #accordion to add to the @accordionnoir playlists that day
@sellathechemist @catsalad @accordionnoir
Mine is a low-rent version with no notes or anything I think
Not the most inviting collection, without some way to open up that mass of music
@sellathechemist @catsalad @accordionnoir
Now seeing the small print on the side of your picture it looks like they might cover similar ground?
Thereās a bunch of other records though. Those donāt include the later Mute ones like Tango Zero Hour and Rough Dancer and the Cyclical Night that brought him to the ā90s šŖ revivalists like me
(I think those fed into the 12 monkeys soundtrack)
I just heard of a Central Park Concert one thatās supposed to be great
@sellathechemist @catsalad
Again not the expert
Lomax has a lot of recordings at the library of Congress
https://www.loc.gov/item/afc2004004.ms010201/
And other stuff here I believe
https://culturalequity.org/alan-lomax/friends/ledbetter/chronology
@sellathechemist @catsalad
I had a lot of fun with one of the more interesting chapters in my book I think, the somewhat Baffler-style trenchant, āThe Folk Revival: The Accordion Betrayedā
I tried not to make fun of Alan Lomax and others too much. But at least one reader might have complained. Figures like him did so much good though they can take a ribbing
Wish I couldāve asked him about his accordion phobia though
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