Nope, checked my dates; Dana was 19th century; for some reason I think of him as 18th.

Well, wait a second... Dana reported work songs and shanties. And Hawai'ian long talk.

So like most “great men” he can take the criticisms

And if the work is valid the man will not mind

I don’t 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 he’s dead now so we don’t have to yell about those same things anymore

That’s just science

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

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

#FolkMusic

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

(Ironically?) Before that, parts might have been made at great expense one at a time by watchmakers

When in my accordion research I finally found a timeline of the industrial production of sheet metal, that was a good day

Pirates played accordions. And i can tell it's true cause i like it !

And those Pirates you mention also didn't sing shanties; because they hadn't been invented yet.

Shanties were the work songs of merchant seamen from approx. the late 1820s and reported to be dying out in the late 1870s.

So, a 19th century working-class culture hijacked into "Pirate" fantasy-land.

PS. also, no, not every song mentioning the sea or sailors is a shanty.

They never asked about his little “windjammer” 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 ‍️

But I think Lead Belly’s only five known “windjammer” 🪗 recordings were made late in his life in the 40s by Mos Asch

They’re all on this set
https://folkways.si.edu/leadbelly

Not sure he owned an accordion when Alan Lomax knew him

He’d 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

Where I linked to an article but didn’t include the author’s name (making it hard to search up)

How the sheng became a harp,
by the very cool
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 🪉

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 that’s a story to be told! 🪗 ‍️
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zheng_Yi_Sao