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Cajun Accordion



Here's an interesting tidbit I picked up on a recent trip to New Orleans.  This
was a couple of weeks ago, so forgive me if I've paraphrased something
incorrectly.  

A couple of books on Cajun music history made reference to German Jewish
settlers in Louisiana in the mid 1800's introducing the accordion to the Cajuns.
 Also Jewish distributors in New York actively sold the instrument to Louisiana.
 However, the early German diatonic instruments tuned to C/F (I may have gotten
the specific tuning wrong) did not work will with the fiddle-based repertoire,
and so it was not until the G/D-tuned English diatonic instruments were
introduced in Louisiana that the instrument really took off.  

I wonder what sort of music Jews were playing on such diatonic instruments? 
Probably popular German songs-- but could any of it been specifically Jewish?  

---------------------- jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org ---------------------+


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