Posted on May 23, 2022
Oom, pah, pah!
On this date in 1829 Armenian-born Cyrill Demian received in Vienna a patent for a musical instrument he dubbed an accordion. It had two to four keys that could play chords while the “squeeze box” (or bellows) was compressed.
(There was an earlier version of a similar instrument - one that went by another name altogether - invented in Berlin, Germany.)
Many versions of accordions exist today; most have a keyboard on one side, to play a melody, and buttons on the other side, to play chords. The keyboard and buttons don't have any way to give expression to a musical piece—there is no volume control, for example—so the pleated layers of cloth and cardboard known as the bellows are the mechanism through which musicians play loudly or softly, smoothly or energetically.
Celebrate the accordion's birthday by listening to folk music with an accordion, or accordion music by Weird Al Yankovic or folk metal groups.
Here's Weird Al's Yoda...
Here is a nice Sicilian tarantella...
And you gotta love this folk metal accordion battle...
(Note: I presume the band is speaking Finnish, which I do not speak, so I don't have any idea whether or not there is cursing on this video.)
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