The Thousands

According to Malcolm Gladwell, it takes 10,000 hours of practice to master anything. But it only takes about five minutes to learn how to fudge it on a Cajun accordion. It’s a clunky kind of accordion played by Cajuns: French Canadians who settled in the swamps of southern Louisiana. They modified a German-style accordion to play alongside the fiddle and the triangle in their harsh and screechy folk music (I know: people actually play the triangle). A bottleneck slide on a guitar can tell you about pain, but that Cajun line-up of instruments speaks of agony.

Think of the Cajun accordion as a harmonica for those who find breathing in and out of their mouth a challenge. The bellows do the breathing for you here. There is the equivalent of seven mouth harps under the hood, packing the same volume power as a small gathering of Bob Dylans. Like the air chambers of a harmonica, each button and lever on the Cajun accordion will give you two notes – one note when you push in and one note when you pull out. It gets confusing.

Don’t chicken curry about it though. Cajun accordions only cover one key so you can never hit a wrong note. If you’re out of time or a little wonky on the squeezes, just tell people you’re channeling the raw spirit of the music (the standard fallback line for folk musicians).

Step 1: Pull out all the stops
Figuratively? Sure. But see those four black knobs on the top? They’re called stops. Pull them out.

Step 2: Get comfy
Pop that squeezebox on your lap. Left hand sits under the big strap. Pinky finger gets the bottom lever and index finger gets the top lever. Slip your right-hand thumb through the thumb strap and rest it on the side of the accordion. Right fingers get all the plastic buttons.

Step 3: Press levers
There are only two patterns to play on the levers: Bottom, Top and Bottom, Top, Top. You can put your pens down.

Step 4: Start squeezing
Flip a coin to pick a lever pattern and play it while spreading and squeezing. Unclench your sphincter, then try it on the accordion.

Step 5: Press buttons
Those ten plastic buttons are all yours, kid. Go crazy. Every note is the right note! Four adjacent buttons can cover an entire octave! What’s an octave? Who cares!

Step 6: Out of breath?
If the accordion is running out of breath, hold that sneaky lever on the back with your thumb to let in extra air on the spread. If you’re the one that is running out of breath, calm the fuck down – it’s only an accordion. Even a dog can play it.