BY SUSAN SELIGSON Squeezebox Diaspora

About seven years ago, after MARIÉ ABE HAS TRACKED THE SPREAD completing undergraduate studies OF ACCORDION MUSIC as a concert pianist, Marié Abe spent AROUND THE WORLD, a summer traveling solo across AND TAKEN IT TO A FEW Europe. She fell in love somewhere PLACES IT HADN’T BEEN around Budapest. By the time she reached Portugal her life had changed dramatically. Abe is now an accordionist. From Hungarian dance bands to Roma buskers, the accordion beckoned to her across Eastern Europe. “I began seeking out accordion music, and it is virtually everywhere,” says Abe, a petite, exuberant woman whose custom-built Italian accordion, when strapped to her back, is occasionally mistaken for a massage table. As she grows increasingly virtuosic on what is sometimes said to be the only instrument you hug, Abe joins a soulful, culturally kaleidoscopic, geographically all-encompassing tradition. A musician since the age of three, when she received special dispensation from the instructor to attend a Yamaha piano school for five-year- olds and up, near her home in Tokyo, Abe joined the College of Fine Arts last fall as an assistant professor of music, specializing in musicology and ethnomusicology. With a PhD in ethnomusicology from the University of California, Berkeley, Abe has a range of research interests, including the politics of space, and chindon-ya, a style of Japanese marching music used as a form of advertising. But her love affair with the accor- dion grows only stronger as Abe, who wears a silver accordion charm around her neck, hones her own edgy, new-wave sound and forges musical collaborations with recording artists in the United States and Japan, in a range of genres.

22 BOSTONIA Winter–Spring 2012

22-23_BostoniaWinter12_03.indd 22 2/2/12 2:00 PM 9 POWERHOUSE ENSEMBLE Playing Ethio- bility somewhere played accordion in a trio at pian pop with Debo Band at Great Scott, between a guitar Tartine Bakery & Cafe. She was Abe adds her accordion to a sax, a , and a piano. Here so at home there she became a an electric fi ddle, a guitar, and a tuba. is just a partial list bread taster for the celebrated of styles that accor- bakery. “It was a populist dions, in incarna- band,” says Abe, whose group “Some people assume the tions grand and petite, with cultivated a lively following. accordion is all polka, all the buttons or keys, might be “They gave us free rein. We time,” says Abe, who puts the played: Argentinian tango, played some klezmer, some blame for this misperception Austrian Schrammelmusik, Parisian, a little of everything.” squarely on The Lawrence Basque music, polka, Chilean But beyond the regular Welk Show, which debuted cueca, klezmer, Cajun, zydeco, gig, Abe and her musical in 1951 and ran on network French bal musette, Italian “partner in crime,” violinist television for 30 years. , American Tejano, Dina Maccabee, hunted down Abe knows as well as Korean trot music, South world music to transcribe and anyone the vastness of the African Boeremusiek, Greek arrange. Abe’s “omnivorous accordion diaspora. She was , English dance music, hunger” for genres was fed coproducer of Public Radio and the rasguido doble sounds during gigs with a string of International’s Squeezebox of Brazil. groups, including Thorny Stories, a musical and social Abe teaches many of these Brocky, the Japonize Ele- history of the accordion, traditions in her Musical phants, Ramon and Jessica, hosted by The World’s Marco Cultures of the World class. Tango No. 9, Campo Santo Werman. That documentary, Her students, who are theater company, Marzouk spawned by a dinner party taught basic zydeco steps, Mejri, and Gnut. conversation are often stunned to learn Last spring Abe teamed between that zydeco giant Buckwheat up with the Boston-based WEB EXTRA Marié Abe Abe and a has collaborated with Keith Debo Band in time for the plays accor- journalist, Richards and Eric Clapton. Ethiopian pop group’s first dion and profiled Abe owns several accor- record contract. The band’s talks about immigrant dions, piano-style and push- performance at last summer’s her music in a video accordionists button, but her prize instru- Lincoln Center Out of Doors at bu.edu/ through stories ment was handcrafted to festival in New York City drew bostonia. of zydeco dance order in Castelfidardo in raves from New York Times halls, Mexican east-central Italy, where she critic Alastair Macaulay, who norteño clubs, and Arab mas- traveled to meet with the wrote, “Every number it played ter musicians. artisans who made the town deepened my delight.” In this Abe and coproducer Julie famous for crafting accordions. powerhouse ensemble, Abe’s Caine traveled the length “I have two other accordions at keyboard accordion strains and breadth of California for home in Tokyo,” says Abe, who enrich the tight interplay of a year doing research. To Abe, visits Japan twice a year. One saxophone, trumpet, electric the accordion embodies the is a three-row diatonic button , guitar, drums, voice, immigrant experience—it is accordion, the kind used in and a mean tuba. musical shorthand for the Mexican and Colombian Debo Band rocked Great old country. music. The other is an Argen- Scott in Allston in December, tinian tango instrument where Abe, dressed in a A ONE-MAN BAND called the bandoneón. “I flowered shift, bright red The accordion as we know played in an Argentine band tights, and boots, sat center it was created in Austria in in California,” she says. “The stage looking blissful and the 1800s, and it caught on basic principle is the same, but urging soulful chords from among migrants for its ease, they play with the accordion her piano accordion. hearty sound, and versatility: on their knee.” Abe never tires of perform- an accordionist was a one-man The only child of a chef– ing, and she never tires of band. Culturally promiscuous, social worker mother and expanding her repertoire. the accordion is sometimes businessman–jazz aficionado When it comes to accordion, mournful, often upbeat, occa- father, Abe came to Boston she says, the possibilities sionally raucous, its porta- from San Francisco, where she are infinite. p

PHOTOGRAPH BY MAX ESPOSITO Winter–Spring 2012 BOSTONIA 23

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