T-ara: ( 티아라 ) Electro Accordion K-pop (Korean Pop Music)

I’m working on my book’s chapter about Newfoundlander accordion, which is quite rich and fun.  Meanwhile of course, who can get Korean pop music out of their head?  (Note, we previously mentioned Dallea, a group of North Korean women who use significantly more accordion content than the artists I present today.)

The Korean girl-group T-ara (get it?) uses a dash of accordion in this dance song “Countryside Life”, which is rather frenetic and relentless.  Here are two contrasting videos, one is a sort of glitzy stage set-piece and the other is almost the same music and patent dance-moves, but with some kind of narrative about older folks watching TV, and people working in a greenhouse, and a dog, and stuff.  I admit to complete befuddlement.  If you search online you’ll find trailers and previews that were released to promote the videos.  Used to be the video was itself a promotion.  I guess we’ve got those for movie-previews now?  ”Teaser-trailers”?  Weird.  The final product as after-thought, hmm.

I actually like the way the accordion touches are mixed in with the other sounds so you’re not quite sure what’s what.  Get your Brian Wilson on a bit.  If anybody wants to share more Korean accordion with me that’d be swell.  Enjoy.

T-ARA N4 – Countryside Life – MV (Dance Version) 티아라 N4 전원일기

 

T-ARA N4 – Countryside Life – MV (Drama Version) 티아라 N4 전원일기

 

I just heard a disturbing little piece on the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, like NPR but probably better) about K-pop and how they groom the performers like olympic gymnasts with cosmetic surgery and stuff to get “perfect.”  The Wikipedia page for T-ara says they were in “training” for three years before their first record.  Yikes.  Stick with the accordion kids.

Now back to Newfoundland.

All Hail, “the Beer Barrel Polka!”

Here is a rough-draft of a section of my Accordion History book in honour of today’s anniversary of the day the light-hearted if frantic “Beer Barrel Polka” hit #1 on the pop-charts as a distraction in the otherwise tumultuous and rather disturbing year of 1939.

Please pardon our mess as this is still being worked on obviously.

(in 3-D! gotta go find my red/blue glasses)

The Cat and the Accordion / Котэ и аккордеон

Accordion Noir co-host Rowan Lipkovits posted this to the Vancouver Squeezebox Circle Facebook thing, saying, “This is even cuter than the dog accordion solo.”  Yup.

Calle 13 – Cumbia de los Aburridos (a really weird, funny, and probably inappropriate video)

Calle 13 is a band from Puerto Rico well known for eclectic music (somewhere beyond reggaeton), social commentary, and occasional controversy, political and otherwise.  Cool.  Oh, and some accordion in there sometimes from their man Visitante, who plays like, a million instruments.  Like the disturbingly provocative melodica in this concert-poster (left).

Anyways, what’s important is, I found this highly strange and funny video by them, that is self-un-explanitory.  I do not know what it is about.  It’s probably (as I’ve noted in my title) inappropriate in various ways.  But it’s awesome as it unfolds.  Think, country-music cumbia, olympics dance-contest, non-normative body images, and tutus, and you’ll have no idea what it means either.

Their other videos are funny or powerful too.

Accordion Strap Day! September 4, 1937

I know my timing’s off, but what the hey, this is important stuff that can’t wait.

I stumbled on what looks like an original 1937 patent for the standard accordion strap!  How’s that for geekdom?  Who’s gonna care about this except like, whoever reads this site about accordion history?  It amused me though.

Click to download PDF of the patent.

Modern patent wars weren’t invented by computer companies, they ate up the accordion world too back in the day.  The different companies of the 1930s-1960s “Golden Age of the Accordion” were prone to fight pretty hard for the next customer, with new features to throw at the unwary coming with each new model.*  My junior-high shop teacher used to say that cars hadn’t changed on the interior in forty years, Detroit just changed fins and chrome.  Fuel-injectors and computers were added since then (and Detroit now has more organic gardens than car-factories), but the idea that style sells more than fundamental technology should give consumers pause.

But here we have a feature that really did stick around.  If this is the source of the design, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a post-1930′s accordion that didn’t use something much like this.  Neat.

Now if I can only get one with fins on there.

*I’m quite interested in the different “free-bass” bass-button systems they came up with in the 1960s.

These let you play individual notes, rather than the set chords of a standard “stradella” system.  Some manufacturers were really pushing this idea, since it let you play classical counterpoint like Bach, and was technically pretty cool.  Unfortunately, there were at least six or seven competing set-ups for the buttons, and the new machines were expensive, and… they didn’t save the accordion from rock and roll.  Still, my dream accordion is a smallish, light-weight, free-bass only, chromatic button accordion.  Maybe someday I’ll get somebody to make me one.

Ain’t it cute? Found it looking for free-bass pictures. On sale in the UK, not a bad price at all at £699. Don’t see too many of these. I would like four-rows though.

Duke Ellington’s Accordion

[I've added polish to this since I posted it a few hours ago.]

Our friend Alan from the Vancouver Squeezebox Circle  sent me this:

From the book ‘Stomping the Blues’ by Albert Murray

I want to know more of the story of this picture – the date?  That’s a 1930′s style accordion I’d say.

Cornell Smelser played accordion and recorded with Ellington in 1930, I wonder if that could possibly be his? (Like Lennon picked up the session guy’s when they were recording, “All You Need is Love.”) That would be a treat; Cornell died soon after of TB and [Correction, I just heard from Cornell's family that he lived a long life after his jazz career. I look forward to more such happy errors!] not many jazz accordionists stepped in to take his place.

My fave Cornell track:  ”Double Check Stomp” from 1930.  One copy I have lists it as by, “The Jungle Band,” that’s Ellington’s orchestra.

Dig the kazoo solo.

Then there’s Ellington jammin out “Accordion Joe” with Cornell.

Here’s a later version of Cornell’s (he wrote it) “Accordion Joe,” with the Dorsey brothers along for the ride.

Oh, hey!  There’s a bunch of Cornell Smelser tracks on YouTube.  Nobody has ever collected his stuff at all.  I’m gonna grab them while I can.

Here’s “Cotton Club Stomp” from that same “Jungle Band” in 1930.

Thanks to Squeezebox Alan for starting this off!

Oscar Hernandez: Texas Conjunto to Another Level

So I’m writing about the use of accordion in Texas-Mexican border music.  Pretty cool, I’ve never felt like I knew what was going on there.  I’m getting a beginning of a feel for it.

Some standout players really intrigue me.  One is a man named Oscar Hernandez who played the unusual chromatic button accordion (five rows, rather than the diatonic three-row that most use.)  He’s pretty amazing.  Hernandez played with a group called El Conjunto Bernal with another accordionist Paulino Bernal in the 60s.  It was a pretty radical move to have two accordions, but they had two who were each extraordinary.

Here’s one of Hernandez by himself.  Note how he starts by stating the tune once, and then slowly goes way beyond it while staying somehow linked to the original style.

OSCAR HERNANDEZ, ”Ciudad Victoria”