Re: Cajun Accordion

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

"Peter Rushefsky" <rushefsky_p (at) univerahealthcare(dot)org> wrote:
> 
> 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 how well documented, or at least what the sources are, for 
these statements. Just from general knowledge or research, I know 
that the accordion was a common trade item in music stores starting 
in the 1840s and that the first U.S. method (at least on OCLC) dates 
from that decade. Daguerreotype portraits from the 1840s and 1850s 
showing people (both men and women, but especially women, it seems) 
with early accordions are relatively common---I must have noticed ten 
or so in the last year on E-bay---and recall seeing one, in fact, at 
the Historic New Orleans Collection. This gives me the idea that when 
it was first introduced in the U.S., it may have appealed to the 
class of people who could afford to have daguerreotypes made (they 
cost $5, cheaper than painted portraits, but still expensive). I 
don't know what classes of people in Europe first bought the accordion 
when it was first introduced, but I'll bet it was similar (middle-
class, urban?). 

There were of course lots of German Jewish peddlers active in the 
South in the 1840s and 1850s, and some could have sold musical items. 
Newspaper ads from New Orleans and Lafayette, etc., would show who 
was selling accordions (there was a German newspaper in New Orleans).
But there is a common fallacy of thinking that somehow the button 
accordion did not catch on in the U.S., except among Cajuns 
and certain immigrant groups, like Germans and Czechs, but this is 
certainly not true. Around 1900 it was a commonly played amateur's 
instrument. Cajuns mostly use a single-row accordion, and they could 
have been introduced to it through the standard music trade before 
the Civil War (which could have involved German Jewish peddlers or 
merchants) and then bought imported models from Sears & Roebuck after 
1879, when parcel post began. Of course, I'm just speculating, but 
maybe what you read was also speculation. But newspaper ads would 
easily show who was selling accordions in that area.

Paul Gifford

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