accordion | music clip of the day

Category: accordion

Saturday, 12/3/11

three takes

“N’teri”

Habib Koité, live, c. 2007

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Regina Carter (violin), Yacouba Sissoko (kora), Will Holshouser (accordion)
Live, radio broadcast (KPLU-FM), 2011

Kora, violin, accordion—even the names of these instruments sound good together. You have, in succession, words of two, three, and four syllables. Consonants repeat (k/c, r, n), as do vowels (o, a). The last word (“accordion”) echoes both syllables of the first (“kora”), reversing them, as well as the end of the second (“violin”). What does any of this mean? Nothing—it’s simply, for me, a small source of additional pleasure.

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Habib Koité, recording, 2007

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2010

Monday, 10/4/10

Anyone can make English sound like English.

Tom Waits, live, California (Mountain View), 1999

Part 1

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Part 2

Want more? Here.

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2010

Friday, 7/9/10

Alternate career plan for the next life (if the tap-dance thing doesn’t work out): rubboard player.

C.J. Chenier & the Red Hot Louisiana Band, “Jolie Blonde” & “Jambalaya,” New York City, 2008

Like the Blasters and Brave Combo, these guys played last weekend (Sunday the 4th) at FitzGerald’s American Music Festival.

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lagniappe

reading table

. . . I received five hundred thousand discrete bits of information today, of which maybe twenty-five are important. And how am I going to sort that out, you know?

—David Foster Wallace (in David Lipsky, Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace [2010])

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great minds at work

When you see your starting pitcher win a game, that means you’ve played a good baseball game.

—Lou Piniella, talking with Ron Santo on WGN Radio before last night’s Cubs game

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2010

Thursday, 7/1/10

looking back

Today, celebrating our 300th post, we revisit a few favorites.

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3/12/10

Both Chicago blues artists. Both guitar players. Both influenced by other kinds of music.

Musical personalities? They could hardly be more different.

Buddy Guy, “Let Me Love You Baby,” live

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Fenton Robinson, “Somebody Loan Me A Dime,” live, 1977

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Back in the 1970s, when I was at Alligator Records, I had the pleasure of working with Fenton, co-producing his album I Hear Some Blues Downstairs (a Grammy nominee). He didn’t fit the stereotype of a bluesman. Gentle, soft-spoken, serious, introspective: he was all these things. He died in 1997.

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3/3/10

What other pop star has made such stunning contributions as a guest artist?

Sinead O’Connor

With Willie Nelson, “Don’t Give Up”

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With the Chieftains, “The Foggy Dew”

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With Shane MacGowan, “Haunted”

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5/28/2010

two takes

“La-La Means I Love You”

The Delfonics, live, 2008 (originally recorded 1968)

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Bill Frisell, live, New York (Rochester), 2007

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lagniappe

musical thoughts

Music . . . carr[ies] us smoothly across the tumult of experience, like water over rocks.

—Vijay Iyer, liner notes, Historicity (2009)

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2010

Tuesday, 6/22/10

Wealthiest state in the nation?

If music were money, it might be this.

Nathan Abshire (accordion), “Ma Negresse” (AKA “Pine Grove Blues”)

Take 1

With The Balfa Brothers (Dewey Balfa, fiddle), live, Louisiana (Dedans le Sud de la Louisiane [1974])

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Take 2

Live, Louisiana (Mamou [Fred’s Lounge]), 1976

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lagniappe

mail

Thanks, Richard, for another tremendous clip. Art Pepper [6/21/10] left us way too soon. Along with his music, I loved his autobiography. Keep up the great work.

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