Re: button accordion

[Paul M. Gifford <PGIFFORD...>]

Owen Davidson <owend (at) crocker(dot)com> wrote:
> 
> About the chromatic accordion: I find that some of the hallmark techniques
> of klezmer phrasing and ornamentation lay out much more logically (not to
> mention uniformly) on it than on the piano accordion.  I wonder if it might
> be the instrument that Yankovitz played.  Anybody?

Max Yankowitz recorded first in 1913.  It sounds to me like a button 
accordion, or "garmonika" in Russian.  There were many different 
varieties of garmon or garmonika made in Russia at the turn of the
century, including "oriental" tunings used in the Northern Caucasus.
Maybe there was a "Jewish" tuning.  In Belarus today, the garmonika
is regarded as an "old-time" instrument.  The ones I saw there had
one or two rows, but I don't know the tuning.

  And check out a
> photograph of Mishka Tsiganoff with his instrument that appears briefly at
> the very end of a film called "Angelo My Love."  It's hard to see it, but I
> didn't think it was a piano keyboard...  Anybody got the dope on 
this?

Saw the movie, but don't remember the scene.  Probably a bayan?

Paul Gifford