I am reading "Accordion Crimes" by E. Annie Proulx. Anyone else out there read it? Marvelous book for the types who chat on this forum. It is a novel about an old green button accordion from the time that it was made by a Sicillian immigrant to New Orleans and all of its owners until its demise. I was struck by the term she used a couple of times in the chapter about the New England Frenchman. "Kitchen music". Friends and family getting together to sing and play, like "porch pickin'". In that chapter, the accordion owner is looking for a way to learn old time "frenchie" music. "LaMadelaine, everybody had his records- boy, he could hypnotize you. He come out of the woods, learned fiddle from his father - that old fashioned sound. Traditional, hein? But Soucy, he was a genius. Nobody ever played like him, not even this guy they got playing now, Jean Carigan? I switch to hillbilly. There's too many good ones up there. Then the accordion come in strong, so I got interested in that, learned to play a little. In the old days we use to have kitchen parties, everybody come, dance, but the new new houses, the ranch houses? The rooms are too small. So you got to hire a hall, go out to a hall or something got enough room." Interesting comment on how we came to no longer have so much "kitchen music".

Alice in Montana