Accordions in Appalachia?

Subject: RE: Accordions in Appalachia?
From: GUEST,German Bight
Date: 14 Aug 24 - 01:13 AM

A later version of the Carter family used one , but perhaps by then they were relatively well off, and travelling further afield

Subject: RE: Accordions in Appalachia?
From: cnd
Date: 07 Aug 24 - 07:37 AM

Matt, a good question. The accordion was around in other rural American musical vernaculars -- see Cajun music, for example, among others -- but my theory has always been that the more rural climes and a lack of widespread adoption made maintenance and repair difficult, so even if one made it, chances of it being maintained properly are difficult, where as the string instruments that became popular are (relatively) non-specialized and easy(er) to fix.

Now, could you make the argument that the backwaters of Louisiana were any less hard on an accordion than the mountains? Certainly. That moves to my second thought, which is that more accordion-playing folks seem to have settled other areas, so there were more people to teach it, maintain and repair it, etc. This isn't necessarily exclusive to some areas -- Bill Monroe, the progenitor of bluegrass, had one in his original lineup (inspired by his mothers' playing), but quickly dropped the instrument after a few years.

I think most of all is that it just didn't appeal to their musical idiom in a way that lent itself to adoption in later eras. I understand that the autoharp, for example, was not nearly as widespread in the Appalachians before the folk revival, but did see a resurgence because it was a close enough musical analog that some people adopted it.

Subject: RE: Accordions in Appalachia?
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 07 Aug 24 - 06:03 AM

And there was me thinking it was the bagpipes.

Subject: RE: Accordions in Appalachia?
From: GUEST,Hootenanny
Date: 06 Aug 24 - 04:21 PM

Sandman, I thought that was concertinas ?

Subject: RE: Accordions in Appalachia?
From: The Sandman
Date: 06 Aug 24 - 03:34 PM

good taste perhaps, definition of a gentleman someone who can play the accordion but refrains from doing so

Subject: RE: Accordions in Appalachia?
From: meself
Date: 06 Aug 24 - 03:21 PM

Hmmm ... the internet tells me I'm misspelling 'accordion' ... !

Subject: RE: Accordions in Appalachia?
From: meself
Date: 06 Aug 24 - 03:19 PM

Good question! And it applies to other places as well: in Newfoundland and in the Canadian eastern Arctic, accordian is very much the prominent instrument; in Cape Breton and Prince Edward Island, and in the rest of the Maritimes, accordian is not particularly common. In Quebec, accordian is right up there with fiddle, while in Ontario and western Canada, it tends to be associated with communities of central/eastern/southern European ethnicities, much less so with the 'mainstream' Anglo/Celt/French.

Subject: Accordions in Appalachia?
From: matthewdechant
Date: 06 Aug 24 - 02:17 PM

Why did the accordion never catch on in Appalachia? Despite it arriving at about the same time as the mandolin and the banjo, and being wildly popular in other parts of the country, Appalachian folk music didn't take to the accordion like it did with the mandolin and the banjo (and thus with the folk revival being primarily centered on Appalachian folk music, accordions were left out of that trajectory for the most part). Why do you think that was?