Finally, It’s Not So Cool to Polka Fun at Accordion Music

Remember the scene in “Good Morning, Vietnam” when ultra-hip deejay Robin Williams was barred from the broadcast booth because he had the audacity to introduce rock ‘n’ roll and political commentary to sedentary Armed Forces radio?

And his super-square commanding officer volunteered to fill in, and the first record he sent over the airwaves was a polka, replete with accordion a-blazing?

Funny on paper, perhaps. But to me, that scene failed for one reason: It was a great polka. I would have bought the sound-track album for that polka alone.

In any case, the scene pointed out a problem with trying to be hipper-than-thou, especially in a medium like the movies that runs months or years behind trends. The film makers obviously weren’t aware that, after suffering decades of scorn, the accordion is, once again, truly hip.

Sure, you could argue that in the period depicted, the early years of the Vietnam War, accordion music was the very antithesis of rock ‘n’ roll. But you also could maintain that the stuffy old lieutenant was a decade or two ahead of his time.

For too long, most rock fans’ familiarity with the accordion began and ended with the Who’s 1975 hit “Squeeze Box” (“Mama’s got a squeeze box, Daddy never sleeps at night”). But have you looked around lately? One of the hippest bands in the world--Los Lobos--uses an accordion regularly in its colorful blend of rock, Tex-Mex and blues. Paul Simon used an accordion in his multimillion-selling “Graceland” album.

Even a middle-of-the-roader like Bruce Hornsby, who played the Pacific Amphitheatre last week, shows no qualms about strapping on a squeeze box in front of thousands of rock fans. Meanwhile, there’s a fabulous Zydeco accordion player and singer from Louisiana named Zachary Richard, known as “the Cajun Mick Jagger,” who can transform the accordion into as sexy and dynamic a stage prop as the electric guitar.

A none-too-easy task, that.

Clearly, the stereotype of accordion-as-perpetual-source-of-somnambulent-champagne-music has been shattered.

And even if you still can’t take the accordion seriously, Europeans do. Recently, the Sjaellands Accordion Orchestra from Denmark stopped in Orange County during its first tour of North America and demonstrated the seriousness that European musicians accord (sorry) the instrument.

The orchestra is composed of 17--that’s right, 17--accordion players who, unabashedly, presented transcriptions of Bach’s stately Toccata and Fugue in D minor, a breezy Gershwin medley and all-American selections from Bernstein’s “West Side Story.”

The program also included a fiery Scandinavian folk tune--a special treat for the way it placed indigenous folk music on a par with “serious” classical music. These musicians, some of whom majored in accordion--that’s right--at the Royal Academy of Music in Copenhagen, seem to get better-balanced musical instruction that most classical musicians. It would be akin to an American violinist going to the Juilliard School and being taught the Beethoven Violin Concerto and “The Orange Blossom Special.”

Anyway, on the Gershwin and Bernstein pieces, the accordions were supplemented by a saxophone quartet that provided sonic frosting. Along with champagne and caviar, strawberries and cream, port and heated walnuts, and beer and pretzels, I would add accordions with saxophones to the list of the universe’s most savory combinations. Maybe the blend was so enticing because both instruments must breathe to come alive, and/or because both have tonal qualities closely related to the human voice.

Either way, after hearing the results, I decided that when I die I don’t want to go to heaven. I want to go to Copenhagen.

Either there or Mexico.

It’s also possible to hear stirring accordion sounds in traditional Mexican rancheras and nortenos. Actually, you don’t even have to go to Mexico to hear them. The real stuff is easily found in numerous Mexican restaurants and taverns around Orange County.

Following my softball team’s weekly drubbings, er, games, we frequently go for eats at a nearby restaurant where we usually encounter Mexican musicians playing for the locals. Though one of my teammates prefers the trumpets and violins that typify mariachi music, I favor the accordion-dominated nortenos.

I notice that whenever an accordionist shows up, most of my compadres start eyeing the exit.

That doesn’t bother me. I bet they also laughed at the polka joke in “Good Morning, Vietnam.”