Several accordion genres get lumped together because they share an instrument and a dance floor. They are not the same music, and the differences are easy to hear once you know what separates them. This piece takes the four that are mixed up most often.
Polka: Bohemia, the 1830s
Polka began as a couple dance in Bohemia and spread across Europe within a decade. It runs in 2/4 time with the left hand playing the oom pah that gives the style its bounce, bass note on the beat and chord on the offbeat.
Then it travelled. Czech and German emigrants carried it to Texas, to Wisconsin and Minnesota, and to northern Mexico. Each place kept the rhythm and changed everything around it, which is why Texas polka, Slovenian style polka from the American Midwest and Mexican polka sound distinct while counting the same.
Zydeco: Creole Louisiana
Zydeco is Black Creole music from south Louisiana, and it is built on blues and rhythm and blues rather than on European dance forms. The accordion sits in a band with drums, bass, guitar and the frottoir, a corrugated metal rubboard worn over the shoulders and played with bottle openers.
Clifton Chenier is the reference point. He played a piano accordion rather than a diatonic box, which gave him the chromatic freedom to play blues lines, and that choice shaped the style.
Cajun: White French Louisiana
The same region, a different community, and the confusion with zydeco is constant. Cajun music is sung in French, uses a single row diatonic accordion, and keeps the fiddle at the front. The repertoire is waltzes and two steps, and the feel is closer to a country dance than to a blues set.
The quick test is the rhythm section. A rubboard and a backbeat means zydeco. A fiddle and a waltz means Cajun.
Conjunto: the Rio Grande Valley
The German polka arrived in south Texas with settlers and stayed. Mexican and Mexican American musicians took the diatonic accordion, paired it with the bajo sexto, and built conjunto, which in Mexico is usually called norteno. The accordion plays the melody in thirds and the bajo sexto covers bass and rhythm, so two players make a full sound.
Beyond the Four
- Vallenato: Colombian, accordion with caja and guacharaca, long flowing melodies.
- Forro: Brazilian, accordion with zabumba and triangle.
- Musette: Parisian dance hall music, chromatic accordion with a wide vibrato.
- Liscio: Italian ballroom music, usually piano accordion.
- Klezmer: Jewish Eastern European celebration music, ornamented and modal.
What They Have in Common
Every one of these is dance music made by communities who could not hire an orchestra. The accordion solved that problem, and the genres differ because the dancers differed, not because the instrument did.
More on the regional traditions in the music writing here.
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