Tell me some thing blasphemous and/or sacrilegious
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@AccordionBruce @catsalad It fucks me up knowing that the bodhrán 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.
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@Theosoreass @AccordionBruce @catsalad noone would believe that the hurdy gurdy was a real instrument
@matthewskelton @Theosoreass @catsalad
They gave Spencer Tracy a Hurdy Gurdy in Captains CourageousWhich is funny, because Kipling features an #accordion in the book, set contemporaneous to its 1897 publication
We can guess the era because the rich kid’s dad is a railway magnate and steams over to pick him up
https://youtu.be/sXDasPDVJWM -
@AccordionBruce @catsalad Neal Stephenson made a similar mistake in the Baroque Cycle: a character is killed by being stabbed with the endpin of a cello. Aside from the fact that this wouldn't be very effective structurally (the endpin is not robustly attached), the endpin didn't *exist* before the mid1800s (prior to that, the cello was held tightly between the legs, as the viola da gamba is today). A musician friend of mine wrote to Stephenson about this, (politely) pointing out the error. He told me that he received a reply, which read: "AAAARGH!"
@BoredomFestival @catsalad
There was lively chatter on message boards when the young adult novel series about Mary “Jacky” Faber featured her playing a little AccordionThey start in 1801 which puts them before the 1829 development of the first accordions
It wasn’t 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 🪗
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Jack_(novel) -
@ProcessParsnip @catsalad
It’s featured near the beginning of my #AccordionRevolution book
there truly are experts in every single thing on Mastodon (not sarcastic).
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@AccordionBruce @catsalad The accordion displaced the bagpipes (in their many variants) across Europe, pushing them to the margins - mountain valleys (Appenines, Pyrenees) on the mainland or islands (Sardinia, Ireland. Scotland).
@sellathechemist @catsalad
Alan Lomax went to Europe in the 1950s to escape the McCarthy eraAnd 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
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@AccordionBruce @catsalad I thought the things pirates don't play were concertinas.
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@Owlor @catsalad
The origin-stories of traditions are some of my favourite thingsLike ~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 “traditional” styles
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@sellathechemist @catsalad
Alan Lomax went to Europe in the 1950s to escape the McCarthy eraAnd 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
@AccordionBruce @sellathechemist @catsalad so that was after he recorded Lead Belly playing it ?
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@Owlor @catsalad
The origin-stories of traditions are some of my favourite thingsLike ~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 “traditional” styles
@Owlor @catsalad
Folk glorious of the 1800s and early 1900s hated the squeezeboxesSo they never talked about them or recorded them or interviewed any of the players
So folklorists can’t do something similar to a comparative analysis of today’s research on the impact of the boombox 100 years later
Mostly it makes you conscious of the question of the historical origins of “authenticity” and how it was used as a sales-pitch, or simply nostalgic amnesia
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@Owlor @catsalad
Folk glorious of the 1800s and early 1900s hated the squeezeboxesSo they never talked about them or recorded them or interviewed any of the players
So folklorists can’t do something similar to a comparative analysis of today’s research on the impact of the boombox 100 years later
Mostly it makes you conscious of the question of the historical origins of “authenticity” 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 #jazz…
🪕 But one music still projects as “modern” while the other has an aura that’s more and more antique and folkloric
Monroe’s mom played #accordion and was a really good fiddle player, and as far as I can tell, no interviewer ever asked him about that
(The key question? “What kind? And what repertoire?” Because a button accordion would’ve indicated an older tradition)
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@Cadbury_Moose @davidr @AccordionBruce @catsalad Thought you might enjoy reading about the Chinese one from an earlier millennium.
@Jeanniewarner @Cadbury_Moose @davidr @catsalad
You’re 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 that’s a story to be told! 🪗
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zheng_Yi_Sao -
@Jeanniewarner @Cadbury_Moose @davidr @catsalad
You’re 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 that’s a story to be told! 🪗
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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/116340900565911951Where 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 RazSound Studies
An Interdisciplinary Journal
Volume 6, 2020 - Issue 2: Special Issue: Sonic Things: Knowledge Formation in Flux
https://doi.org/10.1080/20551940.2020.1794648Title refers to the harmonica mouth-harp not
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Tell me some thing blasphemous and/or sacrilegious
@catsalad since Mary birthed Jesus through partenogenesis, Jesus was probably a semi clone of Mary, wich means Jesus was either intersex or a woman or a quimera.
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@AccordionBruce @sellathechemist @catsalad so that was after he recorded Lead Belly playing it ?
@antares @sellathechemist @catsalad
There’s people who study just Lead Belly and I’m no expertBut 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/leadbellyNot 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
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Tell me some thing blasphemous and/or sacrilegious
@catsalad Oh my dear Catsy, we found the christofascist AND homophobic mastodon.social moderator. I can't thank you enough! https://mastodon.social/@weezmgk/116356708412830751
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@antares @sellathechemist @catsalad
There’s people who study just Lead Belly and I’m no expertBut 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/leadbellyNot 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
@antares @sellathechemist @catsalad
Ironically all the folklorists wanted to hear was his Mexican 12 string guitar, which wasn’t traditional at allThey 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
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@sellathechemist @catsalad
Alan Lomax went to Europe in the 1950s to escape the McCarthy eraAnd 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
@AccordionBruce @catsalad I loathed the accordion thanks to my parents. And then I discovered Astor Piazzolla’s writing for the bandoneon after buying a very cheap second hand CD of Gideon Kremer’s virtuoso band iut of curiosity. I was hooked. Then I found a cheap box set of all of Piazzolla playing/conducting. Libertango is just the tip of the iceberg.
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@sellathechemist @catsalad
Alan Lomax went to Europe in the 1950s to escape the McCarthy eraAnd 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
@AccordionBruce @catsalad By the way, where is the Alan Lomax archive? A producer friend introduced me to it when we were Hutu g for music for a radio programme…
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@catsalad@infosec.exchange this is what being lesbian is like
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