@catsalad
Pirates never played accordions
🏴☠️🚫🪗
(Because they hadn’t 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 1600s–1700s
So every pirate movie with an accordionist is a science fiction movie with a time-travel sub plot 🚀⌛️
@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 “pestiferous instrument”
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
@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, “The Folk Revival: The Accordion Betrayed”
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 could’ve asked him about his accordion phobia though
Cat 🐈🥗 (D.Burch) 
AccordionBruce
SellaTheChemist