MADE IN LOUISIANA
The Acadian Accordion IN A NEW MEMOIR, ACCORDION-MAKER MARC SAVOY CHRONICLES THE INSTRUMENT’S HISTORY IN CAJUN COUNTRY By Jordan LaHaye Fontenot
T
he first time Marc Savoy heard an accordion’s sound, it was drifting across the fields of his grandfather’s farm on the Prairie Faquetiaque in Eunice. It sang, wonderfully, from the catalpa grove, where the tenant Hiram Courville lived. It would be months before the boy Savoy would see, in person, what sort of contraption made such an enchanting song: at Christmas, when Courville visited Savoy’s father’s new outdoor kitchen. In his recently-released memoir, the storied Louisiana accordion-maker writes of the experience: “That night was sheer heaven for me—Wade Frugé and Maxime Rozas on fiddles playing with Hiram on accordion. Wow! I sat next to
them the whole night and didn’t take my eyes off of them … fireworks were going off in my heart and in my head because I was in the presence of those three simple, wonderful old guys. I was hooked for life.” Made in Louisiana: The Story of the Acadian Accordion (2021, UL Press) chronicles the evolution of the Louisiana-made accordion from the perspective of the instrument’s most historically-significant craftsman. Inextricably linked to the history of Cajun music, Savoy’s life story is presented as an homage to the heritage of French Louisiana in its purest form—which survives perhaps most remarkably through its music.
The German Accordion in Acadiana That first accordion Savoy laid his eyes on, Hiram Courville’s, was a German-made Hohner. At Courville’s suggestion, Savoy’s father Joel purchased the same model instrument for his son the following year. Savoy writes: “By this time, at age twelve, I could whistle every one of Hiram’s tunes by heart. I had watched him play so many times that I knew I could play that accordion. I opened up the bellows, listened to the sound of each button, and played “J’ai Passé Devant Ta Porte”. During that time, in the early 1950s, the accordion was still a relatively new instrument to Cajun and Creole music. Now considered a treasured centerpiece of many bands within those genres, the squeezebox—whose origins can be traced back to Southeast Asia over one thousand years ago— first appeared significantly in the South Louisiana folk repertoire as recently as the early twentieth century. The version of the accordion that we recognize today—with its vibrating reeds, its bellows, and its keyboard—emerged to an enthusiastic response throughout Europe in the mid-nineteenth century. Though the intricate and beautifully-designed French brands made their way to Louisiana first as popular novelties sold in New Orleans shops—the cheaper, more durable and simply-made diatonic button accordions from Germany caught up quickly, and were soon found in general stores all across the state. Savoy notes on the Savoy Music Store website that the rural farming communities where these accordions were most popular were the same areas in which German immigrants settled. “Besides introducing the accordion in the Louisiana prairies, [the Ger-
A New Style of Cajun Music
Photos by Ann Savoy, courtesy of UL Press 40
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Cajun music—identified for over a century as the lively fiddle-centric music carried to Louisiana by the exiled Acadians—couldn’t accommodate the diatonic accordion at all until the early twentieth century, when German manufacturers started producing accordions in the keys of C and
mans] are also credited by many with introducing rice farming to Louisiana,” he writes. “This may be disputed, but one factor remains undisputed— wherever you find rice farming, you will also find Cajun music with the accordion.” By the time Savoy started playing in the 1950s, most of the existing accordions in Cajun country were German-made, and they were old. After World War II, with most of the German factories in ruins or behind the Iron Curtain, the only new accordions making their way through the South Louisiana music scene were Hohners like Courville’s and Savoy’s. Hohners were less popular than the iconic Monarch and Sterling brands, referred to as “‘tit noirs” and generally the preferred choice of Cajun musicians throughout the early-to-mid twentieth century, even after their factories were lost to the war. (Courville, however, preferred the Hohners—which responded more immediately to his quick and complicated riffs than the older accordions.) The expense of the instrument, combined with the rarity of replacement parts, meant that musicians were tasked with keeping their accordions play-able for decades, and were repairing them on their own. (In the book, Savoy memorably describes mending a broken spring with a safety pin, a remedy rumored to be used by Amédé Ardoin as well.) As Savoy puts it: “In rural Louisiana in the 1940s and 1950s, many of the accordion players still possessed the same accordion that as youngsters they had worked so hard to earn. The accordion became a cherished possession, only surpassed by the tractor … The accordion represented joy in their lives, and the tractor made it possible to have more time to pursue this joy.” D, allowing fiddlers and accordionists to play in unison for the first time. “These changes ushered in a new style, one where accordion and fiddle played melodies in unison, with the fiddle sometimes soaring an octave above the accordion or dropping to bow a
