Accordion Crimes

This is the story of a green, two-row button accordion.

Its Sicilian maker has a vision of freedom and a future. In La Merica he'll make his fortune creating, with craft and consummate care, other accordions ever better than this one. 

Instead, in the swelter and din of New Orleans, he sees his hopes crash. One more loser in a sea of immigrant scum, he breaks his back daily for a squalid place to sleep. A dangerous turn of events knocks him into a dead end. The musician's tale ends badly, but the accordion's story is only beginning.

Out on the midwest prairie German farmers grind out music until a rock is thrown through the window. Its rambunctious music sounds in Cajun bayoux and a lonely Chicago tenement room. A Tex-Mex virtuoso conjunto player gives the accordion a secret and colours the hot Texas night with intricate runs. A French-Canadian orphan struggles to attain minimal competence on the instrument. A winner of the Polish Polka Playoffs, 1970, picks it up in a pawn shop for small change. A Basque sheepherder plays it in the mountains, a young girl rejects it for rap.

Format: Hardback - Great used condition

Publisher: Fourth Estate

Published: 1996

ISBN: 1857025083