An Ode to the Squeezebox
Forget the iPhone, China, and independents running for president. The next big thing is something else entirely: accordions.
The squeezebox has been down so long, it is poised to shoot through the hofbrau roof. If it were a neighborhood, it would be Coney Island. If it were a food, it would be the pomegranate. If it were an instrument …
Oh, wait.
That's just the problem. You try to talk to people about God's gift to music, and they reply, "If you throw an accordion, a set of bagpipes, and a viola out the window, which one lands first?"
Answer (cackle, cackle): "Who cares?"
For shame. What these jokers don't realize is that more and more people do care.
Well, maybe not about the viola (or bagpipes). But the accordion is just about the world's most popular instrument. It's like rice, cheap and filling. One accordion makes a whole party. From Colombia to Slovakia, entire countries exist on it. And lately, for better or worse, so do hipsters here in America.
I hate loving what hipsters love. That's why I can't bring myself to knit. Nonetheless, the same folks who conferred coolness on "crafting," Brooklyn, and cupcakes are doing it now for the worthy accordion.
You can hear the proof for yourself this Saturday, at the second annual NYC Main Squeeze Accordion Festival at Riverside Park South and 70th Street (2 to 9 p.m.; riversideparkfund.org). There wouldn't be a second festival if the first wasn't popular, right?
"This is not your father's accordion festival," a coordinator of the event and the director of programming for the parks department, Robin Schatell, said.
Among the general population, the accordion still suffers from some image problems, Ms. Schatell admits. But at last year's festival, when she asked the crowd of 500, "How many of you have an accordion at home?" three-quarters of the people raised their hands, she says. That could be, of course, because many were forced to play the instrument as children and haven't touched it since they kicked it into the closet. "In the '30s, '40s, and '50s, there were accordion studios all over the States," a board member of the American Accordionists Association, Dominic Kracic, said. Then came John, Paul, George, and Ringo. "When the Beatles came in, that's when everything else stopped," Mr. Kracic said.
Now that the guitar has had a 40-year run, however, it's enough already. The accordion is so much more moving. It does not deserve eternal linkage to Lawrence Welk and "Lady of Spain."
Walter Kuhr, for one, has been working to de-dorkify the instrument ever since he opened his Lower East Side shop, Main Squeeze, "for all your accordion needs" 11 years ago. "I tried my best to make it popular," he said. "I held concerts every month in my shop."
He also organized the Main Squeeze Orchestra, an all-female group of about 15 accordionists, in pigtails. "We do an eclectic mix, from a Brandenburg Concerto, say, to ‘Like a Virgin,'" Mr. Kuhr said. Their biggest crowd-pleaser, however, is always "Bohemian Rhapsody."
As a co-organizer of the festival Saturday, Mr. Kuhr also will oversee the city's first accordion flea market, which is the place to go if you want an accordion-themed tie. It'll be fun, funny, and a fitting salute to a great instrument. But it will also be hopelessly hip.
Yo, Williamsburg! See you there.
