Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Accordions

Episode Date: February 3, 2025

Alex Schmidt and Katie Goldin explore why accordions are secretly incredibly fascinating.Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources and for this week's bonus episode.Come hang out with us on the SIF Discord: https://discord.gg/wbR96nsGg5

Accordions, known for being instruments. Famous for being annoying, nerdy instruments. Nobody thinks much about them, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why accordions are secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode, a podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt and I'm not alone because I'm joined by my co-host Katie golden, Katie Yes, what is your relationship to or opinion of? accordions

Welcome to heaven. Here's your harp and welcome to hell. Here's your accordion I've been taught by thank you for sending me that strip far side by Gary Larson strip I've been taught by far side strips of Thank you for sending me that strip, The Far Side by Gary Larson. The Far Side Strip. I've been taught by Far Side strips from apparently Garfield. I forgot that was, you sent me those, the Garfield strips about the accordions where I guess John Arbuckle's whole thing was he plays accordion and everyone hates his guts for it. I can't stand him for it.

Yeah, I rediscovered researching. There's like dozens of Garfield's trips where the entire premise is that John Arbuckle plays the accordion and it's another way he stinks. That's the entire premise. And then also from, I think from Looney tunes, I know that accordions are hated, which is interesting because for the first time in my life, I lived somewhere where people actually play accordions outside, just street musicians, and they play accordions. And I think it's lovely actually, now that I hear them in real life, they are, I think, lovely sounding. It's delightful to hear an accordion playing nice music as I'm walking

by. And you know, I will give them a coin or two here and there because you know, it's a, I think it's quite nice. I don't, I don't understand the hate. Now that I'm actually exposed to accordions in my daily quotidian, I have realized that accordions are actually quite nice and lovely. Research told me that Italy and a couple other countries have a very strong accordion tradition. And I was like, pretty sure that's true. Because I do associate them with Europe. And we'll talk about why that's a thing.

And also there's more to it. Yeah. It's like the one song where it goes like, do-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da I don't understand the hate. I was lied to as a child. I was told that accordions are the worst thing ever. And they seem just great. Yeah, and we'll get into the origin of accordion jokes and stuff. This was very fun to research because it really enriched my understanding of this famous instrument, I think. And we'll also mostly be like cultural, historical.

We'll talk some about how accordions work as a machine, but for the nitty gritty, you should basically just take accordion lessons. Like you should try to learn this instrument. Yeah, you jerks. Go take accordion lessons. Why don't you? This was suggested by Tkounio on the Discord with support from xKarex and from xDevalis and ran away in the polls. We usually start with numbers and stats, but this week we're starting with a couple takeaways about what these are and where they come from.

Because takeaway number one, the accordion is an industrial European variation on an instrument from ancient China. Ooh. So it's industrial music, huh? Yeah. They basically added bellows to an instrument that's at least 2,000 years old and comes from East Asia. So I have a simplistic mind when it comes to music. I'm always like bellows plus piano is accordion.

And yet that's not true, is it? Because a piano is a percussive, like hammering instrument, like a harpsichord, right? Like you press a key, a little hammer goes down and goes thong, and then that's a piano key. Even though the keys on an accordion look kind of like piano keys, I'm realizing it has nothing to do with a piano because there's no hammers, there's no strings, some kind of wind instrument. So tell me how that works and what the original one was from China. Yeah, that's all dead on.

It's like a wind instrument. And other than the superficial look of piano keys for one hand on some accordions, it's not very much like a piano at all. And there's also two very broad types of modern accordions. One has buttons for the left hand and piano style keys for the right hand. The other type is just called a button accordion because there's buttons for both hands. So there's also a lot of accordionists who don't have piano keys at hand.

Yeah, and there's like ones that are sort of more cylindrical. And those are the ones I associate with buttons on both sides. And then there's ones that are more of sort of a square or rectangular shape actually. And then that one I associate with buttons on one side and piano keys on the other. And that's the one that I see most often. I don't see much of the just straight up more, it's not quite a cylinder, but it's more cylindrical

than the more rectangular one. Yeah. And some of the ones that are sort of a cylinder or hex shape, they called it concertina. There's like too many accordion types to list turns out but we'll cover some of them and And yeah, they are all based on an ancient Chinese instrument called the sheng the the transliterated spelling is sheng sheng

You said that this was before they added the bellows. So would people, was this more like a kind of bagpipe situation where someone was blowing into a bladder? Yes. Oh. Yeah. I didn't expect to be right. And it's pretty different from a bagpipe in some ways too. Key sources here are an amazing book of scholarly essays about the accordion. It's called The Accordion in the Americas.

It's edited and partly written by Helena Simonet, who's an ethnographer and an assistant professor at Vanderbilt University. Also we're going to link a couple amazing videos. One is of classical accordionist Seneja Sidorova, who did a demo for Classic FM. And then also a video of musician Wu Wei, who classically plays the shung and demonstrated it for London's Philharmonia Orchestra. Some people also call the shung the Chinese mouth organ. And it's a free read instrument is the general

category. You've got a mouthpiece and then a central chamber. The ancient ones used a gourd. Now we use other material, but it doesn't flex like a bagpipe. It's just full of various reads that are either vibrating or not vibrating. I know you just said like it. Yeah. It's like called the mouth organ and I can see why. Looking at it, looking at this guy, absolutely jamming out on it, like, wow, incredible. But you know how like the pipe organ has all these giant pipes.

This is like a tiny cylindrical pipe organ with a metal tube that you blow into and then all the pipes are sort of not just like metal pipe There's some metal pipes, but some a lot of them seem to be like reeds essentially That's incredible. That looks so cool looking. You know how like sometimes in The Mad Max movies they have like kick-ass Instruments that are just like on fire while someone's driving on Fury Road.

Oh yeah, that big truck with the speakers. Yeah, this is something I would expect in that. It looks very cool. It looks very like just, I don't know, like futuristic in an odd way. Yeah, like vibe-wise, it's sort of like a woodwind and sort of like a tiny pipe organ. And also people probably want to just hear the sounds I'm gonna play a few seconds of this video of musician Wu Wei and just what that sounds like him playing the shung So yeah, that's the sound. And it's the biggest difference from a woodwind is that for one thing, the reeds can be wood

or bamboo or metal, a lot of different materials. But a lot of stuff like clarinets and oboes, you are putting a few reeds or one reed in your mouth and directly mouthing the reed basically. And the shung, you are just blowing air into a mouthpiece or a pipe. And then a bunch of reeds inside of the machine are vibrating or not vibrating. Yeah. And you're controlling it with your... You're kind of controlling the airflow with your fingers, it looks like.

Yes. controlling it with your, you're kind of controlling the airflow with your fingers it looks like. Yes, yeah. And you're using your fingers basically to release or stop the reeds. And then the ancient shung, it would be several bamboo pipes to let the sound out. And today it's that or other materials. There's usually 17 pipes. So it can achieve a lot of different sounds. You can do chords and all sorts of interlocking notes with the shung. It's incredibly cool and complex sounding. It actually reminds me a little bit of the sound of like MIDI, you know, like like old games would have sort of like a MIDI soundtrack where you'd have like all of these like things. It kind of has that vibe, which is wild for such an ancient instrument. Right, because it's from sometime in the Zhou dynasty.

It's at least 2,000 years old, could be closer to 3,000. And so it's a very advanced instrument for that long ago. And also, I didn't know what's inside an accordion. An accordion also has what's called this free reed system. There's a bunch of little reeds in there, and when you push the bellows open and shut, you are pushing air across the reeds with your hands and study your mouth. Whoa, that's cool. I thought it was like a bunch of little angry bees that you were like shoving and they're

like, and making various notes. Like you have little bees to make the higher notes and big bees to make the lower notes. Like you have little B's to make the higher notes and big B's to make the lower notes. This definitely made me realize that accordion is one of those machines where if somebody puts you on the spot and asks you what's inside it, that you just reach for stuff. You're like, ah, gizmos, of course. Gizmos, I mean, obviously gizmos and gadgets. I believe some gadgets might be in there as

well. Am I just so uncurious? Because I had never really stopped to think what's inside an accordion. Because I think, I don't know, air, maybe tubes. And that's it. That's the extent to which my brain went in thinking about accordions. I think the thing that made me stop is the kind with piano key looking things. Like I just figured it's something like those strings in a piano, but it's not. It's totally different. I knew it couldn't be like a piano, right? Because I was like, well, it's not hitting, it's not going to have little hammers.

I just thought it's like, yeah, you know, it's probably like a bunch of tiny recorders that you press buttons to play and then the air goes in. But I didn't really think about it much beyond that. Yeah. And apparently players like Senege Sitarova, they compare it to being more like playing a violin because with the bellows, you can do such different touch and dynamics and you can really vary exactly what sound is coming out, sort of like the bow of a violin. And so it's more like that, but then also the many notes of a piano.

So it's cool. Yeah, I do notice that. The guy that I give most of my coins to who does the kick kick ass accordion. He really leans into it and it's moving around similar to violin players, which I also give my coins, my precious coins to violin players. And I know it sounds like I'm being stingy because I'm giving coins, but coins are like entire euros and sometimes two euros. And they're know, and they're also hard to come by. So they're very valuable, these coins. That is money, yeah, for sure.

Yeah, and it's also like just to get that small denomination. I'm like, oh man, I could easily get a copy with this, but you know what, this is such jammin' accordion. I gotta give it to him. I can't not do it. He should play Sabrina Carpenter's espresso. So you kind of get both, you know? I will definitely ask him to do that

in my really bad Italian. It's gonna go so good, Alex. It's gonna go really well. He'll just try to make you an espresso on the street. Like, oh, I don't have a lot of stuff. So like, he'll twist a little spigot in the accordion and some espresso will come out. Yeah, and so basically there's two steps

in inventing the accordion. One is a many century tradition of shungs and similar instruments in East Asia. We think the spark was in China and then it led to a Japanese instrument called the sho, a Korean instrument called the sangwang, a Khmer instrument called the snang. They're all similar free-read instruments where you blow into it. Why did we break the S sound streak when it comes to naming these instruments because to go from that to like concertina and accordion seems kind of you know we could have we should have called it the squeezy

oh an english word about squeezing is right there yeah yeah yeah but uh the fault is German speakers. Of course. Because the second and final step is that people in late 1700s, but especially early 1800s Europe, get a hold of shungs and try to make it where you press it with your hands instead of blowing. But they were directly inspired by the shung. That was most of the idea. I see. But they really didn't like to use their mouths because they were too busy having Bavarian pretzels stuck jammed in there. So they're like, well, we need our

mouth free for the pretzels and the schnitzelgruben. The European name is like the pretzel eater's friend. Right, right. But the European name is like the pretzel eater's friend. Right, right. Or something. Yeah. My mouth is too full of sauerkraut to play the shang. I must use my hands only.

And the name accordion gets coined in 1829 by an inventor in Vienna, Austria. His name is Cyrille de Man. That sounds French. He sounds so French. He might be French, but he was in Vienna, yeah. Suspoitious. That's so suspoitious though. What's he doing there? And he names it the Accordeon. Accordeon. A-K-K-O-R-D-E-O-N.

Which also sounds a little French. Yeah, there was an old German language word, a chord, A-K-K-O-R-D, which means a musical chord or a set of sounds. And so the name referred to it making multiple sounds. Oh, okay. Yeah. All right. Well, I guess that's fine.

I still think we should have called it the squeezy. Yeah, because the big thing is squeezing. It's just all of the internal mechanics of a shung, but you push a central bellows with your hands instead of blowing air. And then because there's not a bunch of different pipes off of it, Diman introduced buttons for controlling the reeds, just like a keyboard of buttons.

So what exactly do the buttons do? Do they press keep like, press down on the reeds so the reed does not vibrate when you don't want it to? Or does it like direct air into the reeds? Like what are the buttons doing exactly? You're usually allowing the reed to vibrate and the others are like stopped until you press the button. I see. I see. So like when something like tamping down the read so it's not vibrating and then when you release when you press the button it releases it and then it vibrates.

That's really interesting. Yeah. And so along with Bellows, those were the ideas Europeans brought to the table. But otherwise, this was directly from the ideas of many centuries of Chinese mouth organs. And it's to the point that we have it documented that Daman knew about this a few years before his patent, another Viennese inventor patented a harmonica in Chinese manner. Well, that's a mouthful. Which is a similar free-read instrument. Yeah, inventors from Austria to Bavaria to Russia mess around with what's a free-read

thing we can do because we see that this makes a cool East Asian instrument. So what else can we do? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know what? That makes sense. It is wild though that that instrument had been around for so long and it was already extremely complicated.

Right. Yeah, what Europe comes up with is mostly accordions. Also an English inventor named Charles Wheatstone creates something that eventually gets called the concertina, where it's a hexagon shape, bellows and box and everything. And then the other main instrument they come up with is harmonicas. A harmonica is another free reed instrument, but you are blowing air across the reeds. There's just a bunch of reeds inside of that thing. Right. Like it's, cause I've done the whole like, on the harmonica, you know, and pretended I'm in jail or something, you know, the whole harmonica thing as a kid.

And you get like- Your mom's like, Katie, why did you scratch tallies into the wall? Where'd you get a knife? Oh boy. How dry are you? Yeah, you blow, like the actual professional like harmonicas that you can use to produce pretty good songs are a lot more complicated than the sort of kid harmonicas. But yeah, learning the harmonic is actually kind of difficult because like your mouth

position and embouchure and all like breathing patterns all makes it work in a way that makes it actual music rather than a kid just going, in a harmonica. Yeah, it's true. I think I've only had the cheapest and childishest harmonica and then there's really nice ones and accordions are this way too. It turns out there's a lot of grades of accordion quality. Usually nicer ones are all handmade and then the less nice ones are stamped out industrially, but they're all the same instrument.

Yeah. I mean, it's like a cheap violin versus a fancy violinist, Stradivarius. Yeah. It's very orchestra stringed instrument coded. It really helps you understand what this is. orchestra stringed instrument coded. It really helps you understand what this is. The rest of developing the accordion is pretty much complete in 1829 with Demand's patent. Just other people iterate it from there, partly because the way I.P. Law worked, his patent only protected his idea within Austria. There's a bunch of other countries. So an instrument maker in France named Boussaint just copies it and changes it a bit. And he's the first one to introduce something that looks like piano keys. And he also shows that at the 1855 World Exposition in Paris, basically the second ever World's Fair.

So that's a huge influence on accordions. Man, the World's Fair keeps poking its head out in these episodes about stuff. It seems like a lot of things like pickles, ice cream cones, accordions, Ferris wheels, they get their start at the World Fairs. And then the other big boost is the 1870s and steam power. Steam power just makes it easier for factories to make a bunch of accordions really fast and really cheaply. And Germany in particular builds a bunch of accordion factories. And then those businesses expand to stamp out harmonicas too. When something gets mass produced a lot, I think sometimes those things earn the ire of people, right? Like

once something becomes really saturated, right? Accordions are everywhere, maybe harmonicas are everywhere, they're going to be made fun of and they're going to be sometimes regarded as, you know, this is classless, right? Because it's like everyone's got one or I see them everywhere for that. The fact that they're so common and mass produced, I would imagine would have caused people to maybe harumph at them. Yeah. That directly leads into takeaway number two. Accordion jokes partly originated in a broader set of jokes mocking poor people and immigrants. I knew it.

You know what? Yeah. I knew this was going to be like some kind of classist thing where it's like, oh, only poor people like to play music with a bunch of reeds and bellows. You know, like a proper gentleman puts his mouth directly on the instrument. Like a gentleman! Right. A lady slobbers the accordion.

A lady slobbers on a trumpet. Doesn't move her hands over one of the devil's bellows. Yeah, this apparently very early on with accordions when they've been invented, but there's not steam power yet. It's an incredibly expensive instrument because it's so many little parts. It's very hard to build and so it's only for rich people. And then Helena Simonet says there's this flip where suddenly industrialization democratizes the accordion. Boo, democracy.

We hate that, apparently. Yeah, it's basically the most amazing cheap instrument from the 1870s on. And also it's so portable, you know, like it's just... Yeah, you can fold it. It folds up as part of the way it works. It's amazing. Now I'm thinking of when we were growing up, my brother, first he played the cello,

played the cello very well. And then somebody from our school band convinced him that he could spend some spare time playing the tuba and fill in that. And so like a lot of our living room was a cello and a tuba for a while. And the accordion is not that problem. Just, just folds up. I feel that because I played a French horn, which is maybe not quite as ungainly as the tuba or the

cello, but I was a small child. So the French horn was quite difficult for me. And then you have to put your hand in it and it gets all moist in there. It's bad. It's a lovely instrument. Love the Peter and the Wolf music where the wolf is the French horn. That's the whole reason I started playing it because I thought that was cool,

but definitely not super comfortable. An instrument that literally folds up as part of like how you play it. And then you can just do that for storing it is incredible. It is. And it especially becomes sort of a counterpoint to the piano. Because also people form very popular musical duos of a piano and an accordion, but a piano,

you need a lot of space in your home. It can't go anywhere. And so you have this like... You've never seen a marching piano. Yeah. And so Europeans start to say, oh, it's classy to play a piano in your parlor and it's low class to play an accordion in the street in the dirt with the horse poop, you know, that becomes the vibe.

Yeah. It's so silly because I think that anytime something becomes rare and inaccessible, it's like, ooh, that's classy. We just determine, oh, well, everyone can get an accordion now, can learn to play it, and so this music is available to the common man. That must mean they s***. Yeah. Yeah, that becomes the European take, exactly. Oh, if a poor person ever does it, it's bad. And I express my richness by doing

something else. Sing aloud, harumph. Lots of harumph, yeah. Yeah, and apparently we have an arguable theory for the first accordion joke about accordions being low class. In 1865, a French illustrator named Honore Daumier made an illustration depicting a poor person playing an accordion which bothers a rich person and they get mad at them. I feel like we should revitalize that cartoon but kind of with a different intent where like the intention is like we should be playing these accordions at rich people because that's a dope way to annoy rich people with some jam and music. Yeah. Strike back at the rich.

The other day we said jiggle the means of production. Jiggle the means of production. Bellows the means of production. Squeeze them. Squeeze those notes out. Jiggle them, squeeze them, you know, do whatever. Bop it and turn it and twist it until we've defeated capitalism. Workers of the world, you have nothing to lose but your bop it. Nothing to lose. Workers of the world. Da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da

da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da And yeah, and the other thing here, because of that accordion invention timeline, that made the United States and Canada a particular hotbed of denigrating the accordion as especially immigrant stuff. Italians and other Europeans who would come over and a lot of immigrants would be people who are looking for economic opportunities. And you know, that's bad because of reasons, right? Like we don't want people to try to make a living, especially if they eat different food from us. Even if that food is

really dope, it's different. So then like they come with their instruments and then everyone's like, hey, I'm gonna hate the food and the instruments until I suddenly decide that actually the food is really good. And now it's everywhere. Yeah, and the accordion weirdly didn't have that flip where suddenly everyone in the US likes it after a while.

It's one of the rare immigrant things that just remains mocked. And I think it's a class thing in a big way. Because just the timeline of white people from Europe immigrating to the US and Canada, the oldest families come around the 1600s, just by being here longer, they're richer. And then when you have mid to late 1800s migrants who suddenly all have accordions, partly because they're portable and you can bring them on the ship, then the like, for lack of another term, WASPy people say, oh, accordions are immigrant stuff, poor people stuff, annoying, bad.

Yeah. I knew that Italians were persecuted on account of their accordions, and it needs to stop. It also turns out Italian accordion culture, part of it is that they developed an accordion with a similar timbre to the Zampogna. The Zampogna is a local Italian style of bagpipe. And the other reason Italy got into it is that in the Franco-Prussian War, 1870 and 1871, it's a war between France and Prussia.

France gets blown up pretty bad. That includes accordion manufacturing businesses. And so then Italian makers pick up the slack from France and start making a lot of accordions. I thought you were going to say they pick up the chunks of the accordion factories that like exploded into Italy, because we're right next to France. So it's like, I imagine just accordions raining from the sky into the Piemonte region of like,

oh, another accordion factory blew up in France. I guess it's, we got a bunch of accordions here now. That's really, yeah, that is. I am imagining an accordion going down Italian steps like a slinky and making noise the whole way. That's fun. That's just a good time. Down the steps in Rome, the Spanish steps. Oh my god. Oh yeah. But yeah, and so in Europe and like the US and Canada in particular, the initial nicknames for accordions were very neutral stuff like the Little Man's Piano or the One Man Band.

But then the upper class starts coining critical nicknames like the Squeezebox, the Stomach Steinway, the Concert Screamer. Those are awesome names though. I mean, I understand that those are meant to have a negative connotation, but that sounds amazing to me. The Stomach Steinway, or wait, no, you said The Steinway Screamer, The Stomach Squeezer. Oh yeah, The Stomach Steinway and also The Concert Screamer. This Concert Screamer and The Stomach Steinway and also the concert screamer. This concert screamer and the stomach Steinway?

It's awesome! I don't know, I feel like we really need to reclaim the accordion as like the kick-ass people's instrument. And we really could. And that leads into takeaway number three, the accordion sustained and connected migrant cultures across three continents. This is related, it's the story of the accordion just aiding people as they made difficult moves in Europe and to both of the Americas from the 1800s to today.

That's so interesting. So was it like, because music is sort of the common, the commonality between people, even if you don't speak the same language. So it seems like that would help people kind of bond, especially on ships and stuff. Yeah, it's particularly helped two entire working class communities become closer to each other.

There's a bunch of sources here from Folklife Magazine, which is published by the Smithsonian. Writers there are Daniel Sheehy, Barry Berge, Tom Pisch, Wilson Corgus, and Jose Curbelo. Also citing a New York Times piece by Seth Coogle and a piece for JSTOR Daily by Ashanta Jackson. The first migration to talk about is just people in Europe moving from the rural areas to the cities in the industrial revolution, like just moving within their country or region. Okay. So they're moving sort of from like into cities during industrialization to get factory jobs. Is that the idea?

Yeah, oddly we mentioned it on the cheddar cheese episode because that helps feed people in London as they did this but this happened with cities all over Europe in the 1700s and That was a much bigger Psychological and cultural disruption than we imagine today because we like drive and travel a lot But a lot of those people they were moving from a countryside community where they knew everybody and that knowledge was rooted in generations to a polluted city of strangers. It was really horrible for them. One of the things they try to take comfort in is music.

And it starts with people just bringing whatever violins or horns or bagpipes they have. And industrialization is sort of the cause and solution to this problem because it causes them to relocate in a jarring way. And then factories start to make instruments like the accordion at a still luxurious price, but you could save up for it and get one. And the accordion is newfangled technology in an exciting way. You can also play your existing styles of folk music on it. It's about as learnable as any other instrument because also poor rural people

tended to be self-taught musicians. So it was equally easy to self-teach the accordion. And especially once German accordion factories drive the price down, all these urban migrants from the rural areas start buying accordion. And especially once German accordion factories drive the price down, all these urban migrants from the rural areas start buying accordions. And then you can gather, feel community. If you speak different dialects or languages, it doesn't matter. It really just helped people across the board. That's so interesting. Because yeah, in Italy, there were a lot of different dialects, because

it used to be a bunch of different countries, not just one country up until the 1800s. So like being able to communicate with other people as people were coming in from the rural areas to the cities must have been really important in kind of building that sense of community. And it is interesting because a lot of the songs that I've noticed them playing, I mean, one of them, Bella Ciao, which is that's actually an anti-fascist song that was originally actually, it became an anti-fascist song and it was originally a song sung by farm workers as sort of a solidarity song, where it's like, yeah, our work is really hard

and we're under appreciated, is kind of like the lyrics to it. Like, so like, and then that turned into a song sung by like the resistance in like Italy, like during fascism, where it's like, you know, basically saying like, you know, I'm going to resist fascism even if they kill me. And so like, and that, but'm going to resist fascism even if they kill me. But that song is played

a lot. And I hear that song a lot, especially from the accordion players. That's a pretty consistent song that's played. And it's a really beautiful song, so I enjoy it. Yeah, that all fits. Because yeah, another reason people love the accordion is even though it was completely newfangled technology, you can play your exact previous folk music and songs on it because it's so versatile and can do so many things. And so apparently there was a somewhat culturally conservative backlash. Helena Simonet says that the yearbook of the Swiss Alpine Club in 1868 had an editorial saying that young people are playing the harmonica

or the accordion rather than our traditional instruments. So there was like complaints like that. Young people and their accordions. Like being mad at TikTok or something as a young people thing. Yeah. But in the end you could still play the old music and it's better to be able to get an accordion than to just not be able to afford to get an instrument at all. And so it spread really rapidly across, especially all of Eastern, Southern, Central Europe, really

took over. Ironically, it probably preserved a lot of that traditional music. The people complaining like, oh, this is going to destroy our traditions. It probably ended up saving a lot of traditional folk music because it would have maybe otherwise been lost because people, as people don't have like a piano or a violin in their house anymore, but then they would have these accordions and then they would be able to spread that music far and wide.

Like, that's probably why we still have a lot of that music in sort of the common culture. spread that music far and wide. That's probably why we still have a lot of that music in the common culture. It's true. Yeah, especially these Folklife pieces, they talk about a bunch of ways that's happened. Because without that, you just lose it. Because it's self-taught musicians, a lot of them don't have printed music. It's basically an oral tradition. It's amazing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And then that cultural bonding and cohesion that happens from rural to urban

Europe then happens across the Americas starting in the 1800s. In South America, a lot of port cities get this. We'll link about a community of Italian emigres who have created a lasting accordion tradition in Buenos Aires. And then German migrants did something similar in Barranquilla, which is the major port of Colombia. There's also European and African migrants who first created a musical genre called merengue in the Dominican Republic, and then switched from stringed instruments to accordions once accordions were available. And then the accordion also brings together two entire cultures in North America and helps

them define themselves. One of them was the evolving concept of Mexican people in both Mexico and also a United States that kept taking over pieces of Mexico. That cultural identity experienced a lot of strain with those invasions and land grabs and also a lot of local pressure in places to either be more quote unquote Mexican or less quote unquote Mexican. But as all of that happens, there's large waves of German immigrants and Czech immigrants who come to Mexico, also to Texas. They all establish the accordion on both sides of the shifting US Mexico border.

Musical genres like Norteno and Tejano can cross that border. They can also be part of defining yourself however you want that to be. That's amazing. Also, there was this really nasty period in America where it's like essentially the definition of what white is went through all these fluctuations. And it was, you know, like whiteness is kind of a concept defined by exclusion of other people. So it's like, you know, within sort of like

Mexican American communities, it's like, well, but you know, we're white, right? Like, and then other, another opposing force of saying like, hey, like without a better term, sort of the WASPy Americans will never accept us. So we should embrace our identity as Latino, as Mexicans, and sort of have some solidarity based on that. When you're an out group, right?

And you're being persecuted, there's sometimes attempts to being like, no, we're like the same as you, as the-group. And then that's met with so much pushback that the out-group often will create like their own solidarity, right? Like, okay, well, we have our culture that we're bringing in our solidarity and making connections where we can with people who do accept us. And then ironically, then that makes, you know, like often the sort of like people who were excluding them in the first place are like, see, like they don't, they refuse to

assimilate that sort of solidarity through music, right? Two different cultures who are coming together by immigrating to similar locations. Tamisha was like, yeah, these distinctions are really artificial and manmade. It is our instinct to connect to other cultures through music, through food, through the accordion even. And so when it's like, oh, but like culturally we're too different. It's like, that's not, that's not really a thing, right? Like if people can connect over an accordion, they can connect over anything. Yeah. And exactly fitting what you're talking about, the other big cultural group that benefited

from this is what became thought of as Midwestern white people. Because as recently as the late 1800s or even early 1900s, a lot of those ethnic groups were considered pretty distinct or even not similar to the Waspie people who'd been here longer. And Helena Simonet says just around the Great Lakes, one tavern in the late 1800s could have French Canadians, Germans, Italians, Irish, Scandinavians, Slavs, Czechs, Poles, Finns, various Jewish people. But they all played the accordion. And so that was one big thing to create a unifying context and a fun context to, for better or worse, broaden the concept of white people in the United States. It's still excluded other people from there, but people like say

Germans didn't have to feel so left out. You know, bringing up Germans for no reason at all on my end. Yeah. But I mean, it is really interesting because I think it can sometimes come as a surprise to modern Americans that in Europe, there's a lot of weird sort of attempts sometimes of X group of white Europeans to separate themselves from Y group of white Europeans. There's a lot of kind of cultural mixing in the city where I am of like Northern and Southern Italians and stuff. So that concept I think is becoming much more understood. There are definitely people who will be like, no, like I'm nothing like, I'm not from Puglia.

So why would I understand someone who's from Puglia? And so it's like, and in the U.S. like there was that kind of like thing where it's like, if you're Polish and you're Irish, it's like, what do we have in common? You're Polish and I'm Irish, we're completely different. And so it took a while for that to, that concept to go away, which again,

I think makes it really clear that this idea of like, oh, there are real Americans and then there are like immigrants who we don't want around is like so stupid. Like I'm sorry, it's just dumb. I don't even know really how to argue against such dumbness because it's just like, guys, like, come on, like, like less than 100 years ago, Italians were considered not welcome in the US. And especially their food.

People were like, what's that? It's hilarious now. Yeah, it's, yeah, it's, it's very silly. And especially their food. People were like, what's that? It's hilarious now. Yeah. It's very silly. What's Italian food? What do they eat? We need more accordions to bring everyone together, apparently. Yeah, it bridged languages and religions and all sorts of other things.

And racist lazily just started to fall back to vague skin color stuff. They kind of ran out of other ways to divide people. Yeah. Welcome to heaven. Here's your accordion. More like Gary Larson, you jerk. That's what I think. Yeah, and that also, I hope I didn't bump people out too much about accordion jokes.

That's basically softened as a comedy premise. Now it's just like the accordion is less cool than the guitar is kind of the whole thing, but the roots of so many accordion jokes being a thing as a genre, it's this discrimination, so that's too bad. And I don't think Gary Larson meant anything by it. So, you know, we forgive you, Gary,

mostly because of that Cow Tools comic that was so funny and good. It's true. It gave the cow an accordion and all is great. I'm just imagining now a cow playing its udders like an accordion and I don't know why that image is in my brain and it won't leave. So thank you for that. A cowdian something.

Not really. Ah, something. We'll figure it out later. You know what? We're gonna take a quick break. I'm gonna self-examine about that. And then we'll come back with a ton of numbers in pop culture about the accordion.

["The Accordion"] Hey, is this Jesse? This is Jesse. Hey, this is Stuart Wellington, host of the Flophouse podcast on Max Fun. I'm calling because you've been named Maximum Fund's member of the month for February. Nice. If you don't mind me asking, what prompted you to start supporting the network, become a Max Fun member? I was trying to think of when I started listening to the Fodhouse,

but I think it was something like 2014, 2015. Oh, wow. And then actually having a real job in 2021 was what allowed me to actually start supporting. Congratulations for having a real job and supporting my not real job. So as member of the month, you're going to be getting a $25 gift card to the MaxFun store, a special member of the month bumper sticker, and a special priority parking spot at MaxFun HQ in Los Angeles. It's awesome to support you guys to support MaxFun.

I get endless joy and entertainment. If you're a MaxFun member, you can become the next MaxFun member of the month. Support us at Maximalfun.org slash join. Ego some John Hodgman. At Ego some Janet Varney. And we're the hosts of E Pluribus Motto, a podcast dedicated to exploring the mottos of every state in the Union. Every episode, we will spotlight one state and discuss its official symbols, the motto, flowers, birds, beverages, songs, and even official state muffins. Plus we'll hear from guests whose lives have been inspired by the state's iconography and from residents, who call that state home. Bring some snacks, a map, and your travel journal because this podcast is a virtual

journey like no other. Au de nostrum e pluribus motto quaili beta lunae de maximum fun. And for the Latin challenged among you and us, listen to e pluribus motto every other Monday on Maximum Fun. All right, Alex, I've got a cutter utterly in. A cutter early in. No. This was a very productive in, a cut early in. No.

This was a very productive break, I gotta say. Yeah. Because I had nothing and you had that. Cal-sortina. Cal-sortina. Oh, fume. We did it. We did it. See? We did it. The break just made us weaker once we were back on. We did it. Yeah, cal-sortina is perfect. Cal-sortina. Okay. Speaking of music, we're back with a set of accordion numbers and statistics in a segment

called Let It Stats, Let It Stats. Can't hold back stats anymore. Let it stats, let it stats. Turn away and slam numbers. Wow. You guys couldn't see this, but Alex like somehow created a magical gown out of nowhere. It's beautiful. And I'm keeping it on. It's great. Did you know gowns are comfy? Turns out. Gowns are heck of comfy. Can't beat a gown. Yeah. Really can't. That name was submitted by Sydney Smith. Thank you for my gown, Sydney. We have a new name every week.

Please make a miscellaneous way of working best possible. Submit through Discord or to sifpod at gmail.com. First number is a quick thing about accordion complexity. It's 120 buttons. Oh, that's a lot of buttons. Yeah, that's the number of buttons on just one hand side of a large classical accordion. Whoa. How many keys are on a piano?

I think 88, a big one. Okay. Well then, heck, it sounds like an accordion is more complicated than a piano. Yeah, Sanagisa Siderova, in her video she shows that her large classical accordion has 120 buttons for one hand and then 47 piano-esque keys for the other hand. There's also a switch on it that shifts the buttons to play a whole different set of octaves, so there's even more notes there. And my favorite number about its complexity is at least one week. At least one week is the amount of time it takes to tune that.

Oh, no. Oh dear. You have to drop it off like dry cleaning and come back a lot later. Wow. So how does, I guess because you're like going inside the guts of the accordion and adjusting all the little reeds. accordion and adjusting all the little reads. Sinegia Siderova says, quote, it all comes apart and there are a lot of screws. Each note is tuned by scratching a little bit off the metallic part of the voice. Then the manufacturer puts it back in place, end quote. My God.

So you're basically completely disassembling, adjusting and reassembling the entire instrument. So maybe don't drop your accordion down the stairs like a slinky. Definitely not, yeah. You're going to have to take it into the accordion genius bar and wait a week later. There were too many to list, but I also found a few news articles along the lines of, this is the one accordion repairman in Manhattan. And they've been doing it for 50 years and are the only one left. There's a lot of people like that because it's a very specific art. I was just curious, another number here is up to 6,000 parts.

That's the amount of individual parts in a handmade accordion from the Moseigne factory in France. They make them by hand and it takes 110 hours of labor per accordion. That's incredible. Also I did find the word for accordion in Italian. This is fascinating actually. It's called a fisa harmonica. It's kind of a side thing. I learned that the word harmonica was an early name basically for accordions and has lasted

in a lot of languages. But in English and in the US, we think of a harmonica as the tiny handheld thing that like Bob Dylan plays. It just kind of shifted. Again, a lot of accordions are also factory made at a much cheaper price point and the Hohner Company was one of the first to do it. Also in the 1800s, they set up corporate offices in Toronto, New York City, and Mexico City

and are a big reason that North America got way into these. And with those factories, another fun number is 1899, the year 1899. That's the publication date of an anti-accordion essay by Vladimir Lenin. Well, Lenin, you jerk. The communist guy, you know. He's such a jerk. You know, it doesn't surprise me though, because I have read about Lenin a little bit when I was reading sort of a history book and it seems like he was a little

bit of an elitist actually. Yes, he had an elitist take on accordions and the mass production, as long as the workers are treated okay, he didn't mind. But he was in exile from Russia in 1899. He wrote an essay saying that inexpensive accordions, quote, have nearly everywhere displaced the primitive string folk instruments, the balalaika.

I mean, dude, if you're sad about it, go get a balalaika and start playing it, my guy. Be the balalaika you want to see in the world. It's very, nobody gets to do comedy anymore. It's very like, just do the thing you like. But he was one of these instrument reactionaries saying that traditional instruments are being wiped out by the super popular accordion. Yeah. He was sort of, he was the obnoxious hipster that gets upset once everyone starts listening

to Florence and the Machine. So you know. Sort of a reverse of that. The next number is 1941. Someone wrote an ode to the accordion? 1941 is when a girl named Flory Jagoda accordioned her way out of Nazi Europe. The accordion is like the anti-fascist instrument that will save our world from Elon Musk. I'm telling you guys, we've got to embrace the accordion. Yeah, I mean, the fascists are consistently elitist and rich.

So since the accordion is a working class and immigrant instrument, it's pretty much always been on the right side of history, it turns out. Yes, yes. Like it's great. Yeah. But yeah, Flory Jagoda is an important keeper of the traditions and songs and records of Klezmer, which a lot of people play. Klezmer was a Jewish folk music and a Yiddish folk music that centers the accordion a lot. Yeah. And in 1941, Flory Jagoda was a 17-year-old girl in Yugoslavia. The Nazis invaded, conquered Yugoslavia. That's a real time to be a teenager. Not to

put it so glibly, but God, can you imagine being a teenager at that time? Yeah, you don't get like prom, you know? I'm sorry, the Nazis have invaded Yugoslavia. You get fleeing a death machine. Yeah. So they invade and her very large working-class family is in trouble. Her father gives her an accordion and tells her to flee. Like, we'll stay, you go. And Flory Jagoda plays her way into a train ride that she could not pay for by charming the engineer with her accordion. And escapes Yugoslavia. Dozens of her family members are killed. She survives. Then later on in a refugee camp, she gains the attention of a handsome American soldier and marries him. And then she spends the rest of a handsome American soldier and marries him.

And then she spends the rest of her life in the US preserving Sephardic Jewish music culture, everything and playing the accordion. That's so sad, but also so cool at the same time. You know, it's like, it's like behind every story of triumph during the Holocaust and the pogroms. There's always like, and like this person who managed to survive by being a lovely person, just like their entire family was killed. It's just, it's so, ah, you know? Yeah. I didn't want to skip that. But it's super sad that part. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's important. You know, I think that like, we got to remember the bad stuff, even as we're talking about the hope and the

good stuff. And the accordion has been truly an instrument of hope in helping people. It's this 1800s and 1900s migrants boost in so many ways. It's great. Because maybe it seems a little silly because it's specifically the accordion, but really what it is, is an instrument that you can use that can travel around, that you can play folk music on, traditional music, and play new music on it as well. Which I think that kind of thing, anything that involves art and culture and stories and creativity, I think is something that

can be used to counteract fascism because that human connection is diametrically opposed to sort of the philosophy behind fascism. Absolutely, yeah. And the last number here gets us into a final takeaway. The number is 1918. 1918 is the year when a Slovenian immigrant in West Virginia got accused of bootlegging. Bootlegging accordions? Bootlegging alcohol. Oh. Oh, that would be fun.

He's making moon accordions in the hills and a bunch of cops with violins busted up. It's like, oh no, what do you got in that violin case? Oh, it's a violin and then beats over the head with a violin. Oh, really? So the reason this story is significant, the Slovenian immigrant in West Virginia, his name was Andrzej Jankovic. And Jankovic, that gets us into our final takeaway number four. Weird Al plays the accordion because a totally unrelated Yankovic survived World War II and became America's polka king. It is a Yankovic name coincidence that led to Weird Al Yankovic playing the accordion.

Angela Brinkley I just feel like sometimes we might be in a giant simulation where the programmer is really interested in accordions. It's that Matrix architect, but he's an accordion architect. Yeah. The accordion tech or something. Yeah. He's like... Cows or Tina.

That's better. Well, Neo, perhaps do you want to unsettle my little world? Well, what about this? Deedle deedle deedle deedle deedle deedle deedle deedle deedle deedle. Could your human flesh god produce such dulcet tones as this? Deedle deedle deedle deedle deedle deedle deedle deedle deedle deedle. Yeah. And so the key sources here are the Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper and the Library of

Congress. There's two separate Yankovic families here. One of them is Andrzej Jankovic. He is a Slovenian immigrant. In 1918, the US had not prohibited alcohol quite yet. That's in 1920. But there were a lot of bootleggers making and smuggling alcohol to avoid taxes or get around local laws against alcohol. So they were still bootleggingers making and smuggling alcohol to avoid taxes or get around local laws against

alcohol. So they were still bootlegging before Prohibition. And his daddy went down Concertina Road. Bootlegging culture is so funny now. Anyway. So Slovenian immigrant Andrija Shankovic is accused of bootlegging and to dodge the heat, he moves his family to Cleveland, Ohio, partly because there's an entire Slovenian ethnic neighborhood in Cleveland.

I didn't know that about Cleveland. I don't know a lot of things about Cleveland, to be honest. I'm really sorry, Cleveland. And this was 1918. It might not really be there anymore, but it was there then. And as they live there, Andrzej's son falls in love with the dominant instruments and the dominant musical genre in Slovenian community gatherings. Polka!

Name anglicizes somewhat to Frankie Jankovic. That's a good name for polka. I don't know why, but Frankie Yankovic really gives me polka vibes. It really gives me oompa-doompa vibes. Yeah, it feels good. And polka, oddly, could be a whole other episode, but it's folk music from Bohemia and other parts of Central Europe, like Slovenia. And it's sort of the classic, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da kind of thing? Yeah. And it feels good on an accordion, you know, back and forth. Yeah, it's great. I like it. And so Frankie Yankovic gets really good at the accordion. He also needs to stop

to serve in World War Two. He is a flamethrower operator. Oh, just rules. Do you think he was like thinking about playing Poco while he was operating the flamethrower? Honestly, yes. Apparently, he was really good and then had to pause his career. So he was very accordion mindset out there. And there's a weird turning point of accordion history where Frankie Yankovic fights in the Battle of the Bulge in Europe. There's extreme winter conditions in it and he almost loses fingers to Frostbite. No!

Those beautiful accordion playing fingers. But he keeps his fingers. Oh, thank goodness. And then he comes home, quickly signs a deal with Columbia Records and spends 20 years making smash hit polka records. He sells more than 2 million singles, he tours more than 300 days per year. His showmanship and skill and also deep ethnic connection to accordion polka make him famous into the 1960s and beyond.

Do you think he ever thought about maybe combining his flamethrower experience with the accordion and making like a flame throwing accordion so you could be like umpah popping and throwing flames like at the same time. Like that Mad Max guitar guy. Yeah. Like the Mad Max guitar guy. I love that guy so much. That's my favorite part of that movie. Oh, such a good movie. Needs more accordions though. Ooh, Mad Max Pulka Road, great. Oh my God, please, yes, please, please, please, please. We need it. The world needs it more now than ever

in these trying times, we need it. Mad Max Pulky-osa, too, there we go. That was so bad. That was really bad. I love it. So, well into the 1960s, Frankie Yankovic is America's polka king. Meanwhile, in 1959, a completely separate Yankovic family in Downey, California has a son named Alfred. Not related. It's just, like maybe vaguely the way people can share a last name, but

they're not relatives. They don't know each other. And that little Alfred grew up to be Batman's butler. So a key thing happens when he is seven years old, a door-to-door salesman shows up to sell music lessons at a local music school. Interesting. And the options are guitar and accordion. Did he like burst into song about how accordions will keep all the local boys from playing pool?

It's very music fan. So the salesman says, we got guitar, we got accordion, what would you like? And Alfred's parents say, hey, because we have the same last name as a polka celebrity, why don't we have Alfred take accordion lessons? That's the reason. You know what? That makes perfect sense. Yeah.

Good parenting. It's like if I tried to play third base for the Phillies, because Hall of Famer Mike Schmidt did that. Yeah. I'm not related to him. I have no connection to him. It's that kind of thing. That shine's going to rub off on you a little bit.

It's true, I do think about it sometimes. He had a great mustache, we'll link about it. I probably won't link about it. It's like sometimes I take weird photos because of Nan Golden. It's the way it works, folks. It's the way it works. I'm just hoping to piggyback off of her SEO.

Yeah. And then Alfred Yankovic, he takes three years of accordion lessons and then becomes self-taught from there in all things music, comedy, entertainment. Apparently he has more years of training in architecture when he went to college. But he learns the accordion, he teaches himself all of the Elton John album, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, and then from there learns other popular music. And he's also a fan of a local California radio show hosted by the comedy character Dr. Demento, who does song parodies. I remember Dr. Demento. I mean, I don't think I was listening to it when it was live, but I found it on the internet.

It was big. Yeah. That was where like the Dungeons and Dragons like parody thing was from. There's like a fish head song. It's a lot of cool stuff there, man. Yeah. And because young Alfred is so influenced by this, he starts sending them parody songs when he's still in high school.

And they start getting play under his stage name, weird Al Yankovic. And he does them on the accordion because that happens to be funny and also happened to be the first instrument he was taught. And so from there, he builds his whole thing, record deal, et cetera. And there's a sweet thing at the end where Frankie Yankovic lives into his eighties. He doesn't pass away till 1998. So they collaborate. Frankie encouraged Al to use a real polka song called the TikTok Polka as part of Al's parody of Kesha's song TikTok. And then Al played on a compilation album of Frankie Yankovitch's on a new version of a song called Who Stole the Kishka that's on Songs of the Polka King, Volume 1. So they end up playing together

too, which is really sweet. That's really lovely. I haven't met Nan Golden yet. I believe she might have passed away. Have you met that Schmidt guy from baseball? I am going to check if he's living. And he is living. What? Nan Golden. I guess he's only 75 because you retire young in sports. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He's arguably the greatest third baseman in history.

I think Nan Golden's alive. Look at us. Okay. Nan, if you're listening, Nan, we got to join forces. My podcasting with your incredible activism and also world famous photography. Yeah. And Mike, let's talk some dingers, man. Let's do it.

Let's toss the old- Simpler goal. Let's talk the old pig skit around. That's what baseball is called, yes? It's very American gendered orbs where the woman wants to do amazing art and culture and the guy just wants to play catch with a cool guy. It would be very funny though if I could play catch with Nan Golden. Just like, hey Nan Golden, do you want to play some baseball?

We have the same last name you see. We share so much in common. Me and Mike trying to figure out how a camera works. How do you... Oh, the cap's on. episode for this week. Welcome to the outro with fun features for you such as help remembering this episode with a run back through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, the accordion is an industrial European variation on an ancient instrument from China.

Takeaway number two, accordion jokes originated in a broader set of jokes mocking poor people and mocking immigrants. Takeaway number three, the accordion sustained migrant cultures and united divided working class communities across three continents. Takeaway number four, Weird Al plays the accordion because a totally unrelated Yankovic survived World War II to become America's polka king. And then a lot of stats and numbers in the middle of the show, everything from the extraordinary complexity of accordions to conservatism about them from Lenin, to people escaping the Nazis with them, and more.

Those are the takeaways, and I said that's the main episode because there is more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now if you support this show at MaximumFund.org. Members are the reason this podcast exists, so members get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic is the Lawrence Welk Show and its impact on Abraham Lincoln's grave. All of that is accordion driven. I know. Visit sifpod.fund for that bonus show, for a library

of more than 19 dozen other secretly incredibly fascinating bonus shows, and a catalog of all sorts of Max Fun bonus shows. It's special audio. It's just for members. Thank you to everybody who backs this podcast operation. Additional fun things, check out our research sources on this episode's page at maximumfun.org. Key sources this week include an amazing book, it's called The Accordion in the Americas. It's edited and partly written by Helena Simonet, who's an ethnographer and an assistant professor at Vanderbilt University. Also a ton of cultural and musical information from Folklife Magazine, which is a project of the Smithsonian.

It's also part of their Folkways recording series. Articles there by Daniel Sheehy, by Barry Berge and Tom Pitch, by Wilson Corgus, and by Jose Corbello. And I also have a couple wonderful videos of musicians. Classical accordionist Senegis Siderova and classical shung player Wu Wei. Both have just wonderful demos for you and history of those instruments too. That page also features resources such as native-land.ca. I'm using those to acknowledge that I recorded this in Lenapehoking, the traditional land of the Munsee Lenape people and the Wapinger people, as well as the Mohican people, Skatigoke people, and others. Also

KD taped this in the country of Italy, and I want to acknowledge that in my location, in many other locations in the Americas and elsewhere, Native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode, and join the free CIF Discord where we're sharing stories and resources about Native people and life. There is a link in this episode's description to join the Discord. We're also talking about this episode on the discord, and hey, would you like a tip on another episode? Cause each week I'm finding something randomly incredibly fascinating by running all the past episode numbers through a random number generator.

This week's pick is episode 170, that's about the topic of World's Fairs. Fun fact, a lot of World's Fairs sold themselves on sexy dance shows before pivoting to more technology and stuff. So I recommend that episode. I also recommend my co-host Katie Goldin's weekly podcast, Creature Feature, about animals, science, and more. Our theme music is Unbroken Unshaven by the Boodos Band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Special thanks to the Beacon Music Factory

for taping support. Extra, extra special thanks go to our members and thank you to all our listeners. I am thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating. So how about that? Talk to you then. Maximum Fun, a worker-owned network of artist-owned shows supported directly by you.