@davidr @catsalad
See https://mastodon.social/@AccordionBruce/116354735008561385
️‍🪗 ‍️

@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 “traditional” styles

@AccordionBruce @sellathechemist @catsalad so that was after he recorded Lead Belly playing it ?

@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 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)

@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! 🪗 ‍️
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 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 🪉

@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.

@antares @sellathechemist @catsalad
There’s people who study just Lead Belly and I’m no expert

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

@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

@antares @sellathechemist @catsalad
Ironically all the folklorists wanted to hear was his Mexican 12 string guitar, which wasn’t traditional at all

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 ‍️

@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.

@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…

@puppygirlhornypost2@transfem.social

@jpm So why didn't your poke at islam get a mastodon.social content strike but my swipe at chrstianity did? (see edit history on mine) https://mastodon.social/@weezmgk/116351355295067417@catsalad@infosec.exchange

@jpm cf https://mastodon.social/@weezmgk/116356708412830751

@AccordionBruce @catsalad

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.

@FritzAdalis @FurryBeta @pixmo @catsalad add me to this list please. Cats are pets for masochists who haven't discovered their kink yet.

@AccordionBruce @sellathechemist @catsalad ow thank you for the correction and details ! One of my late friend - who wasn't a huge fan of Lomax - always reminded me that Leadbelly played the accordion but we never had a real discussion about that, and I sloppily assumed the few known recordings were done by Lomax.

@AccordionBruce @catsalad Wrong.

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