I’m learning a brand new song and it’s hard. This polka (my first!) requires chord combinations I’ve never attempted, so it feels awkward and weird and makes my head want to explode after two minutes. It also doesn’t sound like anything even remotely resembling a song, much less a polka.
Practice sucks but it works. And when you finally cross over from the creaking and the groaning and the brain exhaustion to playing an actual song…from beginning to end…well, that’s a pretty magical feeling. Seriously. Keep practicing. Even five minutes a day…EVERY day, makes a big difference. Muscle memory is huge when it comes to learning the accordion.
Although I’ve been a long-time admirer of accordions from afar, up until about three years ago I had never even picked one up before. I’m also not what you would call musically inclined. Even so, I hung in there and I practiced–some days more than others, but I kept trying. Here I am the day the UPS man first delivered my accordion to my door.
Note the instructional DVD and the three-quarters empty Corona bottle–both are extremely helpful. Then here I am about three months later, still dutifully slogging through my beginner songbook.
This is six months later (I had started taking lessons with the fabulous John Du by then).
Fast forward to about 14 months later and my next teacher (the great Bob Jacobs) has helped me damn near master my very first Klezmer song.
You don’t have to be a musical prodigy, but you do have to practice. Your middle school piano teacher spoke the truth. I’m going to practice right now. And don’t be discouraged if it sounds like this.
The good times were rolling at Shenanigans last night when Cajun masters Jesse Lege and Bayou Brew along with fiddle player Joel Savoy came to town. I totally dig Cajun music. That’s probably no surprise since accordions are king in Cajun land. Cajun music without an accordion is…well…um…it sure as hell isn’t Cajun. But add a fiddle, a triangle, and some sweet nasal singing to the glorious sounds of the squeezebox and you’ve got a foot-tappin’, twirlin’ around the dance floor good time.
I took a couple of friends and we had a ball, along with everyone else in the room. The thing is, you can’t sit still when you listen to this kind of authentic French Canadian Louisiana music. You get up and you dance, even if you don’t know what you’re doing. In this picture I’m trying to teach my friend Theresa how to do the Cajun-two-step.
Sadly, I didn’t have a video camera so I have no live footage of their fabulous performance last night. But here’s a great YouTube video of Jesse Lege and Joel Savoy performing live at a radio station in Seattle. Here’s another one you can practice your two-step to. And if you want to expand your knowledge of Cajun/Zydeco and Louisiana Swamp music, check out Talia Moser’s radio show, Louisiana Dance Hall, on WRIR right here in Richmond every Monday night from 9-11. Then grab your roommate, your neighbor, your husband or your girlfriend and dance, dance, dance.
If you caught my performance of You Are My Sunshine a couple posts back, then you got a glimpse of the band that made even me look good–Panorama Jazz Band. This band plays nearly every Saturday night at the Spotted Cat in New Orlean’s fabulous Faubourg Marigny/Bywater district. Don’t miss it–the band or the neighborhood. Frenchmen Street (the home of the Spotted Cat and so many other great clubs) is one of my favorite hangout spots in Nawlins. Not planning a trip anytime soon? Well, you can still buy one of their CDs and dance around your living room.
And a big shout out to the magical city of New Orleans on the fifth anniversary of the day that bitch Katrina came to visit. Stay strong!
P.S. Here’s a performance I found on YouTube of the Panorama Jazz Band playing at the Spotted Cat just last month. Quality’s not great, but you get an idea of the spirit of the place and the spirit of the band. Plus this one features the accordion player front and center.
It’s comforting to see that the accordion is beloved worldwide. While waiting for freshly slaughtered sheep to cook, a group in Darhan Mongolia makes merry. Check out National Geographic Photo of the Day site.
When you are learning to play an instrument, you spend an awful lot of time playing it by yourself. And that’s a good thing–in another post I’ll talk about practice. But at some point you need to venture outside of your living room…or at least invite some friends into your living room…and play in front of someone other than your husband or your accordion-loving dog. Easier said than done.
Stage fright is a weird beast. I never thought I had it. I acted in plays all through high school. Plus I often speak in public for my job and can practically do it standing on my head. Sure, I get the occasional dry mouth or the tiniest flutter of stomach butterflies, but basically I don’t get rattled.
I get rattled when I play in front of people. Really rattled. But here’s the catch. The only way to get used to playing in front of people and to get over that feeling that you want to be killed immediately, is to actually play in front of people…over and over again. Son of a bitch!
So I started out slow. I learned Happy Birthday for my friend Andy’s 40th birthday and performed it at his party (this required a public do over). I even played in front of my colleagues at the staff meeting, which definitely required shutting the conference room door and later an apology email to HR. But no matter how much I’d nailed the song in private, I’d always choke in public, even if my public was two friends over at the house for a beer–it’s always best to wait until they’ve had more than one.
Then I came up with the idea of learning AND performing the song You Are My Sunshine at my niece’s wedding reception. Seemed like a splendid idea at the time, but the closer I got to the wedding, the more I freaked out and imagined a meltdown in front of 100 wedding guests staring awkwardly at their feet. I shared my anxieties with the splendid musicians of Happy Lucky Combo and the boys were gracious enough to let me do a dry run with them at one of their Saturday morning farmer’s market gigs. I was way excited. My first public gig! With real musicians! Plus I had mastered the song in my living room at that point, so I imagined people smiling and tapping their toes and thinking to themselves, who is this chick on the accordion? Look at her fingers fly!
Um…it didn’t quite fly that way. When I arrived that morning it was 110 degrees under the Richmond city sun and I had flop sweats worse than Nixon. My hands were shaking so hard I could barely find the keyboard and I seriously questioned whether my bagel would stay down. And that was all before the playing started. Omigod…I sucked. In the picture above I’m looking at the music in sheer panic because it suddenly made as much sense as a sacred hymn in Sanskrit. Honest to God, it was as if I had never seen a note before. But God bless my friends. They came. They watched. And they clapped. And I survived. I went on to play AND survive at my niece’s wedding and things went considerably better. You can watch this performance if you want. Thankfully there is no video footage of my farmer’s market debut.
So the moral of this story is: grab your instrument and get out there and play it in front of someone. Anyone. And then do it again. It hurts–I’m not gonna sugar coat it. But it does get better. I promise.
I’m learning a brand new song and it’s hard. This polka (my first!) requires chord combinations I’ve never attempted, so it feels awkward and weird and makes my head want to explode after two minutes. It also doesn’t sound like anything even remotely resembling a song, much less a polka.
