Story Behind The Song

The story behind it is contained within it. Read it.

Song Description

A story that tells of how I came to love the accordion through my immigrant grandfather and how it led me to become a musician, as well as how this all relates to a life philosophy and aesthetic.

Lyrics

My Accordion
I remember waking early one morning to strange music, carnival music, spooky and out of tune, drifting across the windowsill from the garden, into the bedroom where I slept at my grandparent?s house. Rubbing my eyes, still crunchy with sleep, I stretched my five-year-old legs to the floor and went in search of this alien music. On tiptoe, I peered outside and was amazed to see my mother?s father, my nonno, Carmen Benvenuto, facing his garden, gently working his squeezebox, his ??cordine?, playing Napolitan street songs. He was magnificent with his lion?s mane of splendid white hair and his full, old-world mustache, standing there barefoot, feet planted squarely in the earth. He wore a pair of nappy blue pin-striped suit pants with a rope belt made unnecessary by his ever-present suspenders, a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up revealing thick corded muscle in his wrists and forearms earned by heaving hundred pound blocks of ice up narrow tenement stairwells, and a ratty worn wine grape sweater vest that he lived in like second skin. Though the day would be hot, a chill of early morning dew hung in the air.
He had come to America, like so many others, seeking a better life, and had made his way to Pittsburgh, building this house and raising eleven children in it. He was a man of few words, possibly because his halting English embarrassed him, but with deep reserves of inner strength and kindness. Family lore held that he?d been abandoned on a church step in his village of Amantea, in Calabria, and that a thoughtful judge had given him the good first name of Carmen, and the fine surname Benvenuto, meaning welcome, hoping the small gesture would help him feel less alone in the world. A widower now, my mother would sometimes send me to him, to help ease his twilight years.
Making my way to the garden, I went to him and asked, ?Nonno, what are you doing??
Looking down at me, he smiled and said, ?What am I doing? I?m playing music for my sunflowers!? Of course, any dunce could see that, even a five-year-old one. In that moment, I came to love sunflowers, the accordion, and my grandfather even more.
It would be another four years before my life?s work began in earnest with my first piano lesson. I became a musician, and while piano is my medium, the accordion has always been an active part of my musical fantasy life. Nowadays, with its newfound ?hipness?, you hear it pop up all over the place; in world music certainly, but also jazz, and even contemporary pop and rock. The accordion is ?cool?. But back then, the much-maligned instrument was the object of fear and loathing. Cries of, ?Look out! He?s got an accordion!? would empty a crowded theatre quicker than a four-alarm fire. A gentleman was defined as someone who knew how to play the accordion, but didn?t. It reared its ugly head only in drunken polka bands or on street corners, often with a monkey tethered to a tin begging cup.
But, in the hands of someone who can play it, I mean really play it, an accordion is a most human instrument. Its bellows allow it to breathe and that breathing gives it a voice that can sing with a melancholy or a joy that is uniquely its own.
After thirteen years of chasing the ?big time? in New York City, my lady and I had decided to trade the convenience of twenty-four hour everything for the quieter, steadier life of Vermont. We went in the autumn, the time when God drags out his paintbox and abandons all sense of modesty. Shannon was working the season, waiting tables and one day, with an hour?s break between shifts, we took a ride to see what it was that folks came from around the world to see. Five minutes down the road I was ordered to turn around to an antique shop we?d just passed by. Money was tight, and fearing what this might cost, I reminded her we only had a short time for our ride. She was immoveable, mysteriously adding she had a feeling there was something there?for me. Moments later, I was tugged inside to a musty old case that smelled of attic. She?d walked right to it, right past the clothes and the shoes and the costume jewelry, right to where it slept on a shelf, waiting. She took it down. I opened it. Folding back a frayed velvet dust cloth revealed a Ticino, full one hundred twenty buttons, mother-of-pearl keys. She was beautiful. She was forty dollars. She would be mine. I lifted her from her cradle and gave her her first tentative breaths. Dust music puffed out. Everything seemed to be working, but then trouble. Turning out our pockets came to thirty-five dollars. Five bucks short.
Two elderly gents had been milling around, checking me out checking the accordion out, and seeing my dilemma, one of them stepped forward with a ?fiver? to seal the deal. He said he was from Estonia and that he?d always wanted to play the accordion and seeing my joy gave him pleasure. I was humbled and gratefully accepted his gift. But we weren?t out of the woods yet. The saleslady, a pinched, constipated, sour pickle of a drone dutifully informed me that there was sales tax to be paid, rules were rules, and there was nothing more to be said on the matter, period, case closed. I prepared to tell her to take the accordion and ?shelve? it up her skirt when elderly gent number two stepped up to the counter, produced a ?ten spot? and said in his best Bogart, ?Lady, he ain?t leavin? here without it.? Bowing my way out the door, accordion in tow, I returned Shannon to work and drove home.
We were living down a dirt road off of a two lane country road, and as dusk settled in, I walked down to the beaver pond to make some exploratory passes on my new instrument. Now I was really gonna have to learn to play this thing. The keyboard was sideways but familiar. But what the hell were all these buttons for? As I played, a pick-up truck drove past, stopped about a hundred yards down the road, reversed, and came back to me. Five kids were shoehorned into its cramped cab. None of them looked old enough to drive and the beer and cigarettes did nothing to dispel their youth. The kid riding shotgun, cool in his wraparound shades, reached out, handed me a quarter, and without a hint of condescension, said, ?Here, man. You?re doin? real good.? They drove off before I could ask for requests.
I?ve become proficient enough to occasionally drag the Ticino with me on gigs. I torture Shannon with Neapolitan love songs, sometimes as unwelcome morning wake-up calls. I pray to the patron saint of accordionists, Our Lady of Spain, to grant me a smoother bellows shake and a quicker chromatic button scale. One derisive wag prophesied seeing me in my old age playing French chansons for the patrons of some Montmartre café. He imagined it a sad thing. I see it otherwise.
I was in my garden playing the other day when a kid from up the street stopped by. He rolled his trike to a stop and after a curious minute, asked me what I was doing. With sublime joy, I looked him in the eye, and said, ?What am I doing? I?m playing music for my sunflowers.?

ALKI STERIOPOULOS © 1998, re-worked March 5, 2005, © all rights reserved