It seems that the accordion has been making a “comeback” for the last 30 years, and yet never quite arriving. Whether this latest surge in visibility is the sign of a genuine upswing or just a passing hipster fad remains to be seen. Nonetheless, I feel that accordion players do have a bit of a duty to be ambassadors of the instrument and to do what we can to keep the accordion relevant.

Along those lines, Accordion Americana has a piece on Ten Things You Can Do to Promote the Accordion, which I encourage you to give a quick read. I don’t quite agree with every point (for example, the accordion industry actually did attempt to position the accordion as a “rock-and-roll” instrument back in the ’60s, to little avail), but the overall point is spot-on: “The accordion has to participate in current music to survive.”

Note that this doesn’t mean that we need to merely shoehorn the accordion into existing popular music. I suspect that, if the accordion ever does make a true comeback, it won’t be because of songs like Stereo Love. It will have to be something that incorporates the accordion as a necessary component from the start… perhaps a modernized revival of a traditional accordion-based style (Neo French Musette, anyone?), or maybe even an entirely new style of music entirely.