Accordion in music
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The accordion is in a wide variety of musical genres, mainly in traditional and popular music. In some regions, such as in Europe and North America, it has become mainly restricted to traditional, folk and ethnic music. Nonetheless, the button accordion (melodeon) and the piano accordion are widely taught and played in Ireland, and have remained a steady fixture within Irish traditional music, both in Ireland and abroad, particularly in the United States and Great Britain. Numerous virtuoso Irish accordion players have recorded many albums over the past century or so; the earliest Irish music records were made in the 1920s, in New York City, by fiddler and Sligo immigrant Michael Coleman, widely considered to have paved the way for other traditional musicians to record themselves. Accordions are also played within other Celtic styles (such as in Scotland, Cornwall and Brittany), as well as in English traditional music, American traditional music, polka, Galician folk music, and Eastern European folk music.
In northern Europe and Scandinavia, despite these musical traditions being somewhat fiddle-heavy, accordions may still be heard from time to time in the music of Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden and the Baltic states; the sound of accordion and fiddle played together has been said to be complementary.
In other regions, such as México and Latin America, the instrument is very popular in genres like Norteño, banda, and corridos; in Brazil, it is a fixture in popular music styles, such as Sertanejo and Forró.
The accordion is also used in Western art music, such as jazz (most famously the North American accordionist Frank Marocco) and classical music.[1]