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- [00:00]
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- [00:18]
Felix Contreras
Hey Anna, did I ever tell you about the time when I was in high school when I played in an accordion band?
- [00:24]
Ana Maria Sayer
Many, many, many times.
- [00:29]
Felix Contreras
Let me share.
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Ana Maria Sayer
You didn't think I was going to say that?
- [00:34]
Felix Contreras
Sorry.
- [00:35]
Ana Maria Sayer
Let me run that back. I don't know, Felix. That doesn't even ring a bell. Tell me MORE.
- [00:42]
Felix Contreras
From NPR Music. This is ALL latino.
- [00:44]
Ana Maria Sayer
This is All Latino.
- [00:45]
Felix Contreras
I'm Felix Contreras. Okay. So then if you've already heard it, I will share it with the listeners. So when I was in high school, this is in Sacramento, California, my uncle, my dad's brother for a long time he had this conjunto, a Mexican accordion band. And I was playing drums in this little band in high school and he asked my dad if I could fill in in a couple of his dates. I was exposed to these accordion players, these great musicians who were at the time I just sort of discounted because they were my parents. Music, right? Like, oh, that's kind of rinky dink old stuff. But the thing I remember from that first night was watching that accordion player and he was like Charlie Parker. He was riffing the the whole night. That's my first experience with just how intense and how rich a tradition the accordion is in Mexican music now.
- [01:39]
Ana Maria Sayer
Felix, I love an accordion. I think what a lot of people might not realize about what is exciting and popular and happening today, accordion is still a backbone. It's still a key to that sound, to the mysticism of that music. That's what dreams draws people in. Accordions are back, baby. We're talking all about accordions because they.
- [02:03]
Felix Contreras
Are all over Latin America. They're all over the Spanish speaking world. We needed to call in somebody who had quite a bit more information about it than I do. So I asked my good friend Eduardo Diaz to come in to talk to us. He is the former director of the Smithsonian Latino center and the former acting deputy director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Latino.
- [02:25]
Ana Maria Sayer
Don't forget Felix. He's also the co founder of the International Accordion Festival in San Antonio. Why have we not gone?
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Felix Contreras
Edward, welcome man.
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Eduardo Diaz
Thank you very much. Thank you. I appreciate it.
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Ana Maria Sayer
As the accordion aficionado that you are, what is the magic of this instrument? What is special physically about it to you?
- [02:44]
Eduardo Diaz
Well, it's not like you can strap a piano on your back, right? I mean, so the accordion is very portable, Right. It's a loud instrument. It has tremendous range. It just lent itself to folks coming from Europe to the Americas. And it paved the way for a new sort of version of European music to have a new home in the Americas.
- [03:15]
Felix Contreras
We're going to start with a guy named Narciso Martinez. And let's hear a little bit of the music before we start talking about the man himself.
- [03:22]
Eduardo Diaz
Sure, Sam. Narciso Martinez, his nickname was El Huracan del Valle, the Hurricane of the Valley. You're talking about the Rio Grande Valley, right? This is this area of South Texas that's below San Antonio, along the border, the tip of where the Rio Grande empties into the Gulf of Mexico. He was from the area of Brownsville, San Benito area, and he was actually a zookeeper. It was his real job, right, his day job. He pioneered a sound that was very traditional. In this cut, there's only two instruments. And so this is a very traditional Polish style upbeat waltz that he's playing. And he just sort of paved the way. Later, in conjuncto music, you add in the regular bass and a drum set. You know, that's the formation of the typical now. So the Tex Maniacs or any of the other modern sort of theano conjunto, they're four their forum members.
- [05:12]
Ana Maria Sayer
I mean, it makes sense to me that the accordion would be so pervasive across Latin America because it strikes me as such a community music. There's such a requirement of paying attention to the instrumentation around you and the artistry around you. And that's not going to a conservatory with certain instruments and you learn to play isolated or individually. And accordion is so collaborative. It sounds to me in a way to be an expression of identity.
- [05:41]
Eduardo Diaz
In some ways that's true. I mean, it is a community experience. You know, we're going to talk about Vallenato later, but in the case of Valenato and conjunto music, it's not just about the music. It's about the culture. It's about the myths, it's about the stories that people tell. It's about the food, it's the way they live their lives. It's much more than just the music. It's, as you said, Ana, it's more of a cultural experience and a community based cultural experience.
- [06:13]
Felix Contreras
I want to point out that the recording we played, I picked it up from YouTube, the YouTube channel for the Frontera collection. It's music from The Frontera Collection archives from the Arhuli foundation, which is the largest collection of commercially produced Mexican and Mexican recordings. There's, like I said, there's also a YouTube channel, and we've. We've featured that archive on the show before. But I just want to point that out because it's. That archive is very, very important.
- [06:38]
Eduardo Diaz
Yeah. It's now at the Smithsonian's center for Folklife.
- [06:42]
Felix Contreras
Okay. We're going to select a few countries, briefly explain how the accordion got there. Some of the music, like I said, can't be exhaustive. We're just going to do some finer points here. Let's start in Colombia. And you just mentioned Vallenato. Let's talk about that a little bit.
- [06:55]
Eduardo Diaz
Somebody handed an accordion to a Colombian in the area of Valle Dupar, in the Departmento de Cesar, is sort of an interior, sort of northeastern part of Colombia. You already had cumbia genres, and the accordion just kind of moves other instruments to the side again. It's more accessible. It's louder, It's a little easier to play. Maybe it just has. It's new. Right. The introduction of this mysterious new instrument that came in the hands of a German trader, probably. And the bayonato just goes in this other. In this other direction. And then it becomes this whole thing. I was in Valle de Par once, which is the home of a big bayanato festival every year in April. It's just more than the music. It's just the whole way of life. Some of those mitos, the stories people tell. You turn on the radio station, you don't even hear salsa. You know what I mean? And the salsa is a big thing in Colombia. In Cali, of course. It's just. It's Ballenato 24 7. It's just so embedded. Of course, then it becomes more popular as Carlos Vives discovers it and brings it to a larger audience, which is a good thing. Still maintains its roots, but just kind of takes it to another level of popularity that takes it out of its regionalization, if you will.
- [08:26]
Felix Contreras
I always thought of, like, what Carlos Rivas did for bayonato is sort of similar to what happened with the Buena Vista Social Club, in a way. So it brought a lot more attention to what had been essentially a folk tradition. What strikes me is, is that there is a strong African influence and just about all of this music coming through, and especially when you're talking about music from Colombia, that's evident when you can hear this even in a contemporary setting.
- [09:24]
Eduardo Diaz
Oh, yeah. No, I mean, the ballenato is this remarkable miscegenation of indigenous music. Because some of the tambores are indigenous, although some of them are African. The accordion's European. So you have this. This meeting of three different routes converging. And vallianato is an excellent example.
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Felix Contreras
In 2015, Vayanato was added to the United nations list of intangible cultural heritage in need of safeguarding.
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Eduardo Diaz
Yeah, yeah, it's Valle de Par. There's no need to safeguard nothing. You know what I mean? It's alive and well.
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Ana Maria Sayer
I do want to go back to that moment, though. Mid 19th century, the accordion arrives for the first time. I mean, as we're talking about how kind of adaptable and integratable this instrument is, I mean, there obviously was an extremely different musical scene ready to receive it in Colombia than what it had come from in Germany. I mean, what was happening musically in Colombia at the time? Like, what was the style of music looking like? How did it integrate in that moment?
- [10:37]
Eduardo Diaz
Well, there's a close relationship between the cumbia, traditional cumbia, and bayenato. Obviously, then they diverge. Right, but you have the same basic instrumentation, except the gaeta is gone. Right. The pan flutes, the gaeta macho, the gaita embra are gone. But you still have the tambora, Right.
- [10:53]
Felix Contreras
Which is like a West African djembe.
- [10:55]
Eduardo Diaz
Yeah. You still have the huacharaca, which is the scraper. That's an indigenous instrument. You still have the maraca. Right. You may still have sort of the tambora, sort of the bass drum, the seguidor, another drum. So you still have. The percussive elements are still there. It's just that the rhythms are a little bit different. You know, it's just that the accordion just changed the dynamics of the music. I think the instrumentation is very similar, but the accordion just allows for the music to expand in these other sub genres.
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Felix Contreras
And we're going to play a song called La Pollera Colorado, and it's by a group called Los Corraleros de Mahagual.
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Eduardo Diaz
Sam.
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Felix Contreras
Song called La Pollera Colorado. Group called Los Corraleros de Majahual. You are listening to Aunt Latino. We're talking about accordions. We'll be right back.
- [12:46]
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- [14:06]
Today on the Planet Money podcast. You've seen them, those labels that say made in China or made in France, but what do they really mean?
- [14:13]
Eduardo Diaz
The reaction was it can't possibly work like that.
- [14:16]
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That can't possibly be right.
- [14:18]
We dig into the delightfully convoluted rules behind country of origin, what makes, say, a Chinese product Chinese, and how companies facing tariffs are getting creative. From Planet Money on npr, wherever you get your podcasts.
- [14:32]
Ana Maria Sayer
And we're back talking about accordions on Alt Latino.
- [14:35]
Felix Contreras
Okay, now we're going to move along. We're going to move to the next country. Again, reminding folks this is not comprehensive. We're just touching the. This is the tip of the iceberg, okay? I don't want people writing in and say, you forgot this, you forgot that, because you could do even more cultures and traditions in Colombia. We're going to move to Brazil and we're going to talk about forho. Tell us a little bit about that forho.
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Eduardo Diaz
F O r r o, accent on the O is Brazilian music from the countryside, mostly from the Northeast, I would say. I don't know exactly the origin of the foho. The Portuguese were the colonial, obviously, power in Brazil. And the foho just develops as a rural music. The accordion is introduced and again the rest is history. Then. Now, I mean, my sister who's a big salsa DJ in la, she goes to for hou dances every weekend now. And they're hugely popular in LA and New York, of course, as well. Anywhere where they're Brazilians, you'll find pfoho. And it's just become this whole thing now.
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Felix Contreras
It's another example of drop a pin anywhere in Latin America. A combination of indigenous, African, European. It's just, it's all the same mixture.
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Eduardo Diaz
Yeah. And it's usually in the rural areas. Right. It's. It's where, you know, people are just making music. They don't have, quote, unquote, the sophisticated means. Right. It's not bossa nova or. You know what I mean, Caetana veloz or any of those. I mean, it's just rural folks making this incredible music that becomes theirs. And it penetrates into the urban areas eventually. Right.
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Ana Maria Sayer
I'm looking up for whole right now because I had literally never heard of this. And I love to dance and this is blowing my mind. It's like a salsa step. It's like a salsa step with a different bounce to it.
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Eduardo Diaz
It's bouncier. It's very bouncy.
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Felix Contreras
Let's hear a little bit of it.
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Ana Maria Sayer
Boop boop. Accordion.
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Felix Contreras
This is a track called Asa Branca by a guy named Luis Gonzaga, who very quickly. He was popular in the 50s and 60s. He brought Foho out of the country into the city. In Sao Paulo, Rio, he had a resurgence in the 70s, 80s, people were discovering his music. His music is probably some of the stuff your sister's playing. This is Aza branca from Luis Gonzaga. Check it out.
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Eduardo Diaz
Sari.
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Felix Contreras
One of the things in doing this research about this music is the. The presence of the triangle.
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Eduardo Diaz
Yep.
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Felix Contreras
In. In Brazilian music.
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Eduardo Diaz
So distinctive.
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Felix Contreras
It's in samba.
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Eduardo Diaz
You don't hear it anywhere else really. It's. It's in Brazil where you hear the triangles you heard there in Asa branca. Asa means handle or wing. Branca means white. The triangle is very distinctive in the Brazilian. In the Brazilian music, it's like their version of the cowbell, like you would hear.
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Felix Contreras
There you go. There you go.
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Eduardo Diaz
It's metal, right? It's metal.
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Felix Contreras
It does all 16th notes. Sticky T, sticky T, sticky ticky T, sticky T. Let's move to sartanejo.
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Eduardo Diaz
It's not unsimilar to foho. Sometimes in Santa Nes you will hear even in the southern part of Brazil. The normally identify with the northeastern part of Brazil. But if you go to the border, cebuay or Paraguay, in Rio Grande do Su, for example, or Puerto Alegre is the capital, you'll hear this music. And again, it's very immigrant. It's eastern European immigrants. Remember that we had immigrants coming from eastern Europe that arrived. Like we're going to get to talk about the chamame, for example, later on. And you're dealing with Ukrainian immigrants who come with a chromatic accordion. Those big honking, you know, you see the Russians playing, you know, the big old accordions. And so this style of music was also part of, again, rural, or sometimes they refer to the musega gaucha, the. The gaucho. Right. The cowboy, the Brazilian cowboy. And of course, Argentina is called the gaucho, and Brazil is called gaucho. Same word, just pronounced differently in Portuguese. So it's, again, cowboy music, you know, rural music. Right. That develops and then it always seems to happen in the. In the urban areas as well. But the origins are definitely rural.
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Felix Contreras
What we're gonna play right now is to hear an example of the music is this young woman. She is from Brazil. Her name is Biasoquek. She's sitting in front of a camera and she's playing all these various styles and songs of sartanejo. And if she's 35, maybe. So it just reflects to me how the youth is rediscovering this stuff. This is just a little sample from her YouTube channel. Biasoque playing Certa Nejo. What also strikes me too, is that, like a lot of these rural traditions, they have something in common. Like, it's slow and it's stately. When I heard this, I imagined the traditional danson from Cuba, because it's slow and it's stately and it has its own history. But just the meter of it, it's just. That's what it reminds me of.
- [21:32]
Ana Maria Sayer
I feel like all of these styles, Felix, that we talk about that are reaching to tradition, they all have a bit of that stately air to them. They all come from kind of these waltzier sounds. Or in this case, this has obviously a much more reduced tempo, but they all have a little bit of that really, I don't know, special kind of fancy, mystical energy that then. I think that's the staying power a lot of times.
- [22:11]
Felix Contreras
Okay, we're gonna wrap this up by going to Argentina. And the most obvious reference to accordion style instruments in Argentina is tango.
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Eduardo Diaz
Yeah.
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Felix Contreras
With bandon instrument.
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Eduardo Diaz
Yeah. A cousin of the accordion.
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Felix Contreras
So. But we wanted to do. And you had a brilliant idea. It's like we're going to put. We're going to focus on another. Another genre, another tradition that comes from there that is not widely known.
- [22:38]
Eduardo Diaz
The chamame. The chamame is again, another rural. You know, has rural roots in the northeastern part of Argentina and the provinces of Corrientes and Misiones, I believe. And again, here you have the arrival of immigrants, in this case mostly from Eastern Europe. And the style of music derives. They usually play with a large Chromatic piano accordion. And it's country music. It's nothing like the sophisticated, quote unquote, sophisticated sounds of the tango that you would hear in Buenos Aires, for example. It's the other music of Argentina.
- [23:18]
Felix Contreras
I found something online from a compilation somebody had put Together Again on YouTube, which is where all the music experts seem to be hanging out and offering their stuff. This is from a collection called 100% Chamame or Sientor Siento Chamame. This is something called Puerto Tirol. Check this out.
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Eduardo Diaz
Sam.
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Felix Contreras
Now we're going to wrap this up by going to the Dominican Republic.
- [24:33]
Eduardo Diaz
Oh, boy.
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Felix Contreras
All right, let's hear the music first. This is El Farolito by Francisco Ulloa.
- [25:04]
Eduardo Diaz
These musicians were not living in some kind of bubble with the music. They were paying attention to what was going on in the world with politics and social movements, feminism and so forth. And, like, I was cracking up because there's a whole merengue called pambiche, right, which was. Came. Came later, which was invented at the time that the US invaded the Dominican Republic the first time in 1960. It just stabilized the country. And of course, the United States by then was an imperial power in the hemisphere after the U.S. you know, the U.S. mexico War, the War of 1898. And Palm beach refers to Palm beach because that's where the Marines were dispatched from to come and settle and invade the Dominican Republic. And they were having a hard time getting into merengue. You know, they couldn't quite dance very well. And I'm thinking, like, the merengue is not that hard to dance, you know what I'm saying? But they couldn't get it. And so in response, the merengueros, the doctor came up with a slower version of the merengue, which they call pambiche or a pambichao. And, you know, there is like this very classic song called La Inbacion del Diacisse by Tatiko Enriquez, which comments on the struggle, the resistance to the invasion of 1916. But it's just, you know, I just wanted to underscore that the musicians weren't just like party animals. I mean, they were paying attention to what was going on. And the music in this case forms part of the resistance to the US invasion in 1960. And you don't have Steve Jordan making these corridos about the Texas farm workers in 1966 who marched from the Valley of Texas to Austin demanding better working conditions for the Texas farm workers. They were rooted with the people, right? And the people were demanding justice. They were fighting against imperialism. And so, you know, it's it's but the music's still there. The music was allegre, but had a point.
- [27:41]
Felix Contreras
Eduardo Diaz, thank you so much for joining us today.
- [27:44]
Eduardo Diaz
My pleasure. It's fun.
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Felix Contreras
Eduardo Diaz is the former director of the Smithsonian Latino center and the former acting deputy director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Latino. He knows a lot about music.
- [27:56]
Eduardo Diaz
Man, thank you so much for the invitation.
- [28:02]
Ana Maria Sayer
And that about does it, I think, Felix, for this week's show, a huge thank you, as always, to Grace Chung, who keeps us on track.
- [28:11]
Felix Contreras
Simon Rettner for editing.
- [28:12]
Ana Maria Sayer
Our audio executive producer is Saraya Muhammad.
- [28:16]
Felix Contreras
And Keith Jenkins is the head fan chief of NPR Music. I'm Felix Contreras.
- [28:22]
Ana Maria Sayer
And I'm Ana Maria Sayer. Thank you so much for listening.
- [28:36]
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