"The accordion, now seen as perhaps the quintessential polka instrument, has a radical pedigree equal to that of European polka in the 1800s. Emerging in the same revolutionary period as polka itself, although not yet identified with it, the accordion craze was in full swing buy the mid-1800's. Despised as the instrument of "ordinary people played in taverns, dances or in the streets," the accordion's massive popular success frightened the European musical establishment. (Wagner) In the age of emigration, the accordion traveled with immigrants all over the globe, eventually becoming the defining instrument in a variety of revolutionary people's musics, such as tango. According to Shapiro, "No other wind instrument on the face of the earth is as versatile as the accordion. It can play melody, harmony and rhythm simultaneously, AND its portable. Its diverse family includes both chromatic and diatonic accordions, as well as concertinas, bandoneons, and even harmoniums."  It is perhaps a sad testament to our collective historical illiteracy that the accordion is widely accepted today as a popular stereotype for the old-fashioned and the corny.     Musette--like later American ethnic polkas--emerged as a reed-based urban music of rural peoples flowing into Paris during the industrial revolution. (Roussin) A second wave of Parisian immigration, this time of Italians, brought with it the accordion that would eventually define the popular notion of "authentic" Parisian café culture. The racist suspicions of the French toward Mediterraneans underlay the eventual ironic triumph of Italian accordion music as the defining Parisian sound of bal musette. The phenomenal popular appeal of the accordion in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries spawned racist and classist suspicions elsewhere--even causing it to be outlawed by fascist ideologues. In fact, "Nazi propagandists claimed that the accordion was a 'nigger jazz instrument,' for its close connection with modern American dance music. The Nazis tried to stop accordion bands from playing classical music which for them was an 'abuse of the music of our great masters.' The president of the Reichsmusikkamer--the highest institution controlling music in the Third Reich--declared that 'now is the time to build a dam against the flowing of our musical life by the accordion.'" (Wagner) The intermingling of Polish-American polka with electrified jazz and blues in the multi-ethnic urban centers such as Chicago, was oddly anticipated by fascist music authorities. Indeed, one of the continuing sources of musicological interest in polka is the phenomenally hybrid nature of the genre. From Little Wally's blues-like jams to Eddie Blazonczyk's country and western inflections, polka has continuously incorporated the strains of mass culture, even as it redefined its own unique cultural sphere.  As Kohan (1983), Keil (1994) and Greene (1992) have demonstrated, polka has had a remarkable ability to interact with other cultural forms, both influencing and being influenced by a wide variety of musical genres." Text copyright (c)2000 by Ann Hetzel Gunkel; No portion of this text may be reprinted without express permission of author. Read more of Gunkel's Polka Scholarship