NickC said:
Thanks maugein96! That's a lot to think over. You hit a lot of great points. I have been guilty of becoming fascinated with other styles only to move on to others a year or two later. It is difficult to dedicate to one style that it is not known much outside of the region. I would imagine that it is hard to play the music with 100% authenticity, being born and raised 5,000 miles away and with almost zero access to information in english. I don't think I will abandon my bass buttons for now, even though it is tempting. But I can't promise that if I see one of the little Stocco accordions for sale on eBay I won't hit "buy it now."
I will look into Barbara Lucchi to see how she handles the bellows. Do you think this style of playing aids the feel of the music, kind of how the push/pull of the bellows in Irish music give is that feel (Is that called 'lilt')? Or is it more that it was just passed down as the way the instrument is played?
I have heard (though not confirmed) that there was a small Ballo Liscio scene in California at one point. That seems reasonable.
Your post also gave me insight into the reason I am also drawn to French musette music. Now I am interested in discovering the similarities between the two styles. Do you think that filuzzi was influenced by french musette?
Nick,
Despite having been born in Scotland, most of my recent ancestors have been Irish. "Lilt" in the UK and Ireland tends to refer to a speaker with having a sort of singing tone in their voice. It is more used to describe dialects than in the musical sense.
I never really took to either Irish or Scottish music on the accordion. The two styles are broadly similar, but my particular generation (I was born in 1953), had image issues with the instrument and the music. Old fashioned music for old fashioned people. I know it's different these days but we had Elvis and The Beatles dictating the pace then.
In contrast to that French musette incorporated a load of other influences from South America, Italy, and jazz from the US.
When the time came for me to buy an accordion, French CBA was my choice, on account of the potential for variety. I was repeatedly asked why I had no interest in the Scottish accordion, but fortunately French accordions were being imported into Scotland at the time, and I've bought a few over the years.
Fact:- If you want to play a "foreign" style you need to totally immerse yourself in the music, and try and forget any musical influences you experienced in your own country. If you've never spent any real time in the country whose music you have chosen, the chances of you making the grade in the genre concerned are very slim. Last time I was in France was 1995, so that hardly puts me in a good place to have had much experience of actually seeing and hearing French players and learning from them. Watching You Tube helps a fair bit, but it's not the same as "hands on" experience.
Last time I was in Italy was 1983, so I'm even more at a disadvantage there.
OK, here's the connection between Italian and French musette. There was a considerable amount of immigration to France from Italy in the late 19th, and early 20th centuries. The Italians brought their accordions with them and continued to play their Italian music in their new country. The melting pot was Paris, where thousands of immigrants from The Auvergne, a poor part of central France, intermingled with the other new arrivals, the "ritales" or Italians. The Auvergnats were drawn to the warm sounding Italian accordions, and the two cultures decided to combine their efforts. Many of the Italian accordions of the day were organettos, or diatonic, and eventually a decision was made as to what type of accordion would best fit the bill for the new style of music that was to become musette.
An accordion known as "systeme mixte" evolved, using three rows of diatonic treble buttons, and a 5 row version of the Stradella bass. The three rows allowed chromatic runs on the treble, and the Stradella bass was the same as the PAs that had come from Italy, minus the dim 7 row.
Emile Vacher and others went on to create the French musette genre, but it soon became obvious that the diatonic treble had its limitations.
Domenico Cavagnolo, an accordion maker from Vercelli in Italy, had moved to Lyon in France in 1904, and began to manufacture the same type of chromatic button accordions that he had made in his native Italy. His accordions gained in popularity, and eventually began to oust the systeme mixte accordions used by Vacher et al. In 1919, Maugein Freres opened up an accordion factory in Tulle, France, and copied the Italian construction methods of Cavagnolo. The "French" accordion was well and truly established by that enterprise joining the efforts of Cavagnolo.
In Paris particularly, a large number of the exponents of the CBA accordion were Italians, and that continued right through the term of the popularity of the musette culture. It took some years before native French players took to the accordion, but take to it they did, with gusto.
If you make a study of the earlier musette days you'll find that a large number of the compositions had Italian references in their titles, and the composers themselves often had Italian surnames.
The overwhelming number of Italian accordionists play PA, but a significant number of immigrants to France were from areas of northern Italy, where C system CBA was the most common type. As a consequence of that the typical "French" accordion with stepped mushroom type bass buttons, and rear mounted treble couplers, was actually the same type of accordion as those found in Emilia Romagna and elsewhere.
A significant number of the earlier recording artistes on French musette were Italian born, so it stands to reason there were many similarities with Italian music.
I've done this before, but here are some of the really big name French players:- Peguri bros, Marcel Azzola, Bruno Lorenzoni, Fredo Gardoni, Tony Murena, Louis Ferrari, Pierre Parachini, Achille Pellegrini, Joss Baselli, Richard Galliano, Emile Carrara, and his brother Freddy, Roberto Milesi, Medard Ferrero, and a host of others with Italian roots. The Italian connection should be immediately apparent.
Italian waltz, polka, and mazurka all feature strongly in the French musette repertoire (same as Filuzzi).
What the French did was to discard three voice musette, and introduce elements from other cultures, whereas Italian liscio tends to stick with the music styles found in Italy. The French "chanson " with a lot of American influence obviously gave it a big advantage over Italian liscio.
As a consequence of that French musette has had a whole lot more exposure to the public at large, hence the plethora of French chanson and accordion scores.
Filuzzi was a later creation than French musette, and several of the titles allude to "Parigi", or Paris, particularly the waltzes.
The answer to that question is that both styles were probably influenced by the other. Italian musette tuning in general tends not be so strong in genres other than Filuzzi, where it sort of intensifies. Somebody in Italy will undoubtedly have the answers to your observations, and I only wish that I was fluent enough in either French or Italian to plug a lot of gaps.
It is tempting to get too bogged down with history and all the technicalities, as I am prone to do.
If you're enjoying it, try and give it more effort, and you'll get the benefit of that.
If you're not enjoying it, just move on.
Barbara Lucchi and her father Dino Lucchi, are worth looking up.
For something different try Gigi Stok, Barimar, and Daniele Donadelli. They were/are all from the Parma area and play(ed) Modenese bass (original version of Belgian bass). Daniele is probably the last pro player in Italy still to play modenese bass.
