Ireland - Comhaltas Archive

Gerard Moloney (Winner of the 1989 SeniorAll-Ireland championship on Piano Accordion)The piano accordion is probably theleast respected instrument in theTraditional Irish Music world and withsome justification as when placed inthe wrong hands it can provecatastrophic to a good session. What Iwill endeavour to achieve in this shortpiece, is my own explanation for whyquite a lot of good musicians cringe atthe Sight of the dreaded JCB!When Bouton invented the pianoaccordion in 1852 in Paris, I suspect hecouldn't have envisaged the effect theinstrument would have on traditionalmusic in general. Improvements madeto the accordion in the I 920s pavedthe way for the introduction ofaccordion music into dance bands,particularly those bands of the I 940sand 1950s. Even accordion bandsbecame' the norm around this time inAmerica, the North of Ireland andespecially Scotland (personally Ishudder at the thought of listening to20 or 30 'maccordionists' all whackingit out!). Indeed the adopted home ofthe piano accordion is Scotland whereit takes pride of place alongside thebagpipes and the fiddle. Scotland hasproduced many accomplishedaccordionists none better than PhilCunningham, who has been partlyresponsible for improving the image ofthe piano accordion.In this country we also have peoplewho can actually play the instrumentsuch as Alan Kelly, Ciar;in Galvin,Declan Payne and Oliver Loughlin toname a few. In their capable hands,the piano accordion is a joy to listento. With these people, playing theaccordion is a very personal thing inthat it requires a lot of sensitivity,feeling, individualism and dexterity, acombination of which can be verydifficult to achieve on an instrumentwith very limited versatility andcapability (more on this a littlefurther on). Thus the very rigid natureof the piano accordion can be verydifficult to overcome - a facet of theinstrument which does not lend itselfto traditional music, but moreso tothe strict confines of classical music.Once a player can appreciate that alot more effort is required to playgood traditional music on a pianoaccordion than on any otherconventional traditional instrument,then there is no reason (besides lackof natural talent) why more peoplecan't excel on the instrument.The basic configuration of the pianoaccordion as you would view it sittingon one's lap in the playing positioncan be broken down as follows: onthe extreme left hand side we havethe bass buttons which can be usedto give a chording to accompany themelody (NOTE: these bass notesshould only be used sparsely as33