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Howdy:

Just saw this lovely item and great description on Craigs List.

There's even a picture of the receipt!!!!!!!!!

And in case you're not sure where to find this, you might try "mariachi" as one of the keywords.

 

http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sby/msg/750749707.html

 

Have fun,

Perry Werner

Edited by Perry Werner
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I hate to disabuse the seller of his lofty ideas, but as the mother of a 3-year-old who is obsessed with Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, I must tell him that that is not a pirate accordion, it's a dwarf accordion!

 

Er, in more ways than one!

 

Trivia question (and no looking it up on YouTube allowed!):

 

Which dwarf plays the concertina?

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I hate to disabuse the seller of his lofty ideas, but as the mother of a 3-year-old who is obsessed with Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, I must tell him that that is not a pirate accordion, it's a dwarf accordion!

 

Er, in more ways than one!

 

Trivia question (and no looking it up on YouTube allowed!):

 

Which dwarf plays the concertina?

 

Bashful

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My curiosity piqued by this phrase "The Pirate Accordion" being used to describe the concertina, I thought I'd Google the term and came up with the following from the accordion-wiki, under the heading Famous accordionists:

 

Mary Faber, occasional pirate/cross-dresser from the Bloody Jack (novel) by Louis A. Meyer, plays concertina, even though historically they hadn't been invented yet. An example of the "Pirate Accordion Anachronism" that has been perpetuated in popular culture and imagery since at least Rudyard Kipling's 1897 Captains Courageous, (set in 1751). Kipling squeezes in an accordion eighty years before it was invented. Disney's Pirates of the Carribean's theme-park ride had a pirate playing a concertina, and the film repeated this, again putting post-industrial age accordions back into the hands of sixteenth century sea-farers.

However it doesn't really explain anything, seeing that Captains Courageous isn't set in 1751 and isn't about pirates, whilst Kipling clearly describes the instrument as "a gaudy, gilt-stopped accordion". So what does it go back to I wonder (and how could somebody be so wrong about Captains Courageous)? ponder2.gif

 

Mind you, in Chapter 4 that book does provide an illustration of 1890s sailors making music at sea on melodeon, fiddle and "nachette" (correct name machete, it became the ukulele after it was introduced to Hawaii by immigrants from Madeira in 1878), but no sign of a concertina... :(

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I have heard there are modern day pirates, not the swashbuckling golden-toothed variety, but pirates nonetheless.

 

Perhaps some of them have taken to the concertina, the thieving bilge belching scoundrels!

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I have heard there are modern day pirates, not the swashbuckling golden-toothed variety, but pirates nonetheless.

 

Perhaps some of them have taken to the concertina, the thieving bilge belching scoundrels!

http://www.marinelink.com/Story/TopCat+Mar...tes-201146.html

 

And some snippett:

Earlier this month, Somali pirates kidnapped 50 Yemeni fishermen, and on Nov. 5, pirates fired rocket-propelled grenades at a 440-foot luxury cruise liner.

No one on the liner was hurt, and the ship sped off before pirates could board.

Edited by m3838
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  • 1 year later...

It's fun to see my meagre contributions to Wikipedia quoted, but embarrassing to see my mistakes pointed out. I believe that whole section has been removed from the original Wikipedia page. (I added it to a list of trivia.) I spent a long time trying to figure out when Captains Courageous was set. Somewhere I swear I found the date 1751. As I look at it now, it can't be right, but that's where the error came from.

 

The "pirate" connection is that I was looking through classic nautical literature for the roots of the whole pirate accordion thing. My assumption is that Victorian writers who started the myths of the golden age of piracy (well after it was over) looked to their modern sailors and added the common accordion or concertina into the past they were creating. If Kipling had done that it would have been a great example. Alas, I'm still searching for that first mysterious Pirate musician.

 

Thank you for pointing that out, saves me the embarrassment of continuing that error.

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Earlier this month, Somali pirates kidnapped 50 Yemeni fishermen, and on Nov. 5, pirates fired rocket-propelled grenades at a 440-foot luxury cruise liner.

No one on the liner was hurt, and the ship sped off before pirates could board.

 

Just imagine a boatload of Somali pirates boarding a freighter bringing a load of cheap Chinese concertinas to Europe, and kicking off a whole new genre of East African trad. music with the booty!

Perhaps some pirate captains would advocate along-the-row playing, others cross-row, and there'd be a big showdown from which neither party would recover. Thus the concertina could lead to the demise of modern piracy!!

:lol:

Cheers,

John

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