My Accordion Memory

One thing most people don’t know about me is that I played the accordion when I was a child. I wonder why I kept this fact a secret for so many years. Now when I tell people I am practicing the accordion again they are surprised and say, “I didn’t know you played the accordion.” I almost had forgotten it myself until three years ago when I retired after being a librarian for many years. I suddenly yearned to play a musical instrument. As a child I had wanted to be a pianist but my ever-practical parents refused to buy a piano because we lived abroad and “it would be too difficult and expensive to move”. I did take piano lessons much later in life and discovered that it was not so easy. When it became a chore, I gave up that dream for good.

Several years ago I began asking in music stores where I could get an accordion. I heard about the Accordion Connection, a dealer of new and used accordions in Gilmanton, New Hampshire. One day I woke up with an unexplained urge to go there. I came home that day having bought myself a used Italian Salanti accordion with a white shiny pearl finish. I hadn’t even told my husband what I was doing, which is not like me as I am not an impulsive person. Why did it feel so familiar to hold an accordion once again after so many years? Just the rich smell of the leather straps, the feel of the smooth bass buttons, and the joy of opening and closing the bellows to make the deep rich sounds, brought a long forgotten memory alive.

I grew up in Buenos Aires, Argentina in the 1950’s because my father was a U.S. Foreign Service officer. My mother told me that when she was housebound with my newborn baby brother, and a “golf widow” on weekends, she bought herself an accordion in a music store in downtown Buenos Aires. A man came to the house and gave her lessons. Hers was a shiny, dark red maroon colored Italian accordion that had multiple reed banks and switches that gave the instrument its range of notes and sounds. The accordion was introduced to Argentina in the early twentieth century and became popular with folk music played in the provinces. Buenos Aires was the city of the romantic rhythms of the tango, made famous by the singer Carlos Gardel. I heard the mournful haunting sounds and staccato rhythms of this music all around me. The high walled back yard of our house was just behind the Coq D’Or Bar and Restaurant and during the summer the music wafted through our bedroom windows late at night. My friend Marga, who was German Swiss and lived across the street, had a college-aged brother who played the accordion in their high walled back garden. Next door lived los Alemanes, or the Germans, as we called them in Spanish. They were Nazis. We didn’t often see them but on Sundays could hear them singing loud German songs accompanied by an accordion.

When I was 8 years old my parents bought me a child-sized, white pearl German, Hohner accordion. I knew then that I was not going to get the piano that I longed for. My mother found a German woman who lived in Belgrano, an old established suburb of Buenos Aires, who gave accordion lessons in her home. Belgrano was not close to where we lived so my mother would drive me after school. When I was older I was allowed to go on the bus by myself until a strange man followed me on my way home one day. That ended ever going by myself again.

My accordion teacher lived alone on a quiet street where the houses were close together. The living room was dark as the Argentines kept the persianas or mechanical heavy shades, pulled down for privacy and to keep the house cool. Everything was very tidy. I remember thinking it was drab compared to our more modern, new house in Acassuso with large picture window, shiny black and white tile floors, and the apple green walls painted with the ChemTone interior paint my parents had brought all the way from the United States. My mother was an enthusiastic interior decorator who put her talents to use as we moved often. My lessons were in Spanish because the teacher only spoke German. She was strict and it was because of her that I learned to read music.

French doors on the first floor at the back of the house opened onto a small high walled garden where we had recitals in December, early summer in the Southern Hemisphere. My mother and I played duets together and somewhere in a family album there is a picture of her and the handsome red accordion with me playing my white Hohner. I am wearing my turquoise corduroy, princess style party dress with the white collar ordered from the Best & Company catalog, and my patent leather shoes with grosgrain bows and ankle straps and white socks.

When I was 12, we briefly moved back to Washington D.C. and for some reason the accordions were left behind in Argentina. I had never lived in the United States and had a difficult time in the sixth grade trying to fit in with my classmates and to learn how to be American. Perhaps that is why I never told anyone I played the accordion. I never played again until recently. Even my used accordion purchased so impulsively three years ago stayed behind when my husband and I went off to live in Dubai.

This summer I was at an open house in the community where I live in Vermont. Having just come back from two years in Dubai, I was catching up with my neighbors Paul and Marcia.
“I started playing the accordion again,” Paul mentioned casually.

“You play the accordion?” I asked in surprise.

He told me he had played the accordion in a band in high school. “It was a strange thing,” he went on to say. “I had a vivid dream one night and woke up with such a yearning to play the accordion that I went out and bought myself one.”
“I play the accordion, too,” I suddenly blurted out as if it was a relief to tell someone after so many years.

Not only has my neighbor started playing again, but he has become a collector of accordions and the stories about people who have owned them. Paul has over 70 accordions that he has found and purchased from strangers in the past year. He has discovered that many people have an “accordion connection” in their lives.

Paul now brings me accordions to try out and enjoys telling me that I must find just the right one to fit me.
“It’s just like trying on a pair of shoes to find the most comfortable pair.”

I asked him to loan me some accordion music. He brought me a stack of used music he had purchased on E-Bay and there in the middle of the pile was a music book with a bright green cover entitled “Elementary Accordion Pieces”. The copyright date is 1941. I opened the very yellowed pages, taking in the musty smell, as I carefully placed it on the music stand. I began to play the familiar tango melodies “La Cumparsita” and “El Choclo. And then I stopped in amazement. This was my favorite music book that I had played from over and over again as a child in the 1950’s in Buenos Aires, Argentina. As I turned each page, the melodies came back and my fingers found the keys automatically.

Recently, I called my 90-year old mother, to tell her I am playing the accordion again and practicing duets with my neighbor. She listened attentively as she always does. Then with a passion I had not heard from her in a long time she said, “I would give anything to hold an accordion once again!” I am doing just that for both of us now.