Behind the Bellows

A young boy discovers his grandfather's accordion in a dusty attic. In a modern music shop, a young woman is given a strange look by a clerk when she asks about purchasing an accordion. This sets up a peculiar question: why are accordions consigned to attics but are hard to find in music shops in today's United States? We begin an odyssey of discovery, exploring an acoustic instrument that has more parts than any other. It's history derived from an ancient Chinese "mouth organ" that used the "free reed" principle and continues up through today's electronically enhanced MIDI instruments. Along the way, various configurations of the same bellow-and-reed principle can be found in Concertinas, piano accordions, button boxes - and we hear how these instruments were adapted to play different kinds of music.