'Praises of the accordion' by Noé Álvarez is a working-class odyssey in the desert

When he was a child, Noé Álvarez “wandered through the orchards under the spell of corridistas — musicians whose fiery fingers flew over the keys of his three-row accordion,” he writes in his memoirs, “Accordion Eulogies.” “Norteño music, a genre that originated in northern Mexico, gave voice to the powerless men and women of Yakima who lived and worked far from their homeland.” Corridos, whose name is derived from the Spanish meaning “to run,” tell stories of people who are far from home, on the run, migrating for work, or bandits evading capture. Passed down from generation to generation, their stories are a way to preserve history, but also a reminder of where you come from.

Alvarez, the son of Mexican immigrants, grew up in Washington's Yakima Valley, a semi-arid, now irrigated area about 200 miles east of Mount Rainier. His parents worked in the vast apple orchards and listened to the corridos on their radios, comforted by them as they worked caring for the trees. While the songs eased the anxiety of some of their parents saudad, for Álvarez, were also a reminder of his mythological grandfather who had abandoned his family: “a homewrecker, a drunk, a gambler; “a man trapped forever in the migratory currents.” He also played the accordion.

Álvarez sets out to find him. What follows is an extraordinary interweaving of fibers in which the hemp of history, music, memories and community knowledge binds him to the man who left him behind as a child. Alvarez hopes to resolve the inherited trauma of those forced to wander the land in search of work and the devastation left behind by those who stayed.

looking for your grandfather It also means searching for your instrument. The accordion had its origins in Germany, but immigrants brought it to North and South America. In Louisiana, Álvarez hears the sounds of him in a land of displaced “Germans, Irish, French, French Canadians, Native Americans, Anglo-Americans, Italians and Spaniards” who landed there. Black Creole elders created forms of music that spoke to their descendants. Zydeco, music with an agile rhythm that derives its name from French Creole colloquial expressions for poverty and hard times, works with the accordion. Álvarez meets zydeco legend Jeffery Broussard, “a wounded man with a story to tell.” A hard life as a black man from Louisiana has prepared Broussard to use his accordion to help people heal zydeco traditions.

Broussard tells him: “It is music that contains a lot of sadness… that also finds comedy in tragedy, addressing issues that relate to local populations.” Black Creoles bore the scars of slavery and infused their music with African and Haitian songs, using call-and-response songs that “made music with their beaten bodies, never abandoning the sounds of their homelands.” The accordion added its rich sound to this mix.

Similar stories emerge in other parts of the United States, where accordions took hold on the West Coast and in the Midwest, the South and Texas, where Alvarez travels next. There he meets an accordion maker, who spends more than 100 hours making each instrument by hand.

Álvarez approaches an Italian accordionist, who initially rejected the instrument because of its status as working-class folk music. On a trip to Ireland, Álvarez meets a musician who lives in a country emptied by waves of poverty, famine, political oppression and violence that scattered the people from it. But it's not all sadness. The Irishman tells him that “sometimes words can fail us, melody can save us. It can give you back the color, the feelings and the stories that immigrants lose in dangerous pilgrimages.”

As a sound transmitted by those doing the backbreaking work of building and harvesting crops, work seen as undesirable by the middle class, accordion music is rich in history but also infused with charged masculinity. What does it mean to be a “provider” if work takes you too far from your family? Álvarez's grandfather was on the run, a man who pursued the dream of “something more” that he could not find even thousands of miles from his Mexican town.

Álvarez remembers a childhood in which educators prohibited him from speaking Spanish at school, so he was forced to learn the language of people who depended on migrant labor but resented those they employed. As an indigenous Mexican, he remembers the irony of being prevented from speaking the language imported by those who conquered the land and decimated his people.

In Mexico, Álvarez experiences the double bind of the Mexican American. Considered an American (and untrustworthy) by those who stayed, he becomes a man whose sense of identity is tested. He is personally affected by the violence of the drug cartels, and his dangerous landscape leads him to a greater understanding of what caused his family to leave him.

“Praises of the accordion” is a working-class odyssey in the desert that ends in Álvarez's house grandfather. For years, the only reminder Alvarez had of him was a photograph of a younger man holding an accordion. Bonded by their shared musical history and their magical beliefs that what they seek is in their next destination, the two men finally meet.

Most of us who live in the United States are descendants of those who fled their countries of origin due to the constant violence of poverty, hunger, and lack of opportunity. For those several generations removed from those experiences, the pain of leaving has long been forgotten. But for the children of recent immigrants, the double consciousness of feeling apart in the United States and at the same time foreigners in our ancestral lands is a pain that is difficult to articulate.

But with “Accordion Eulogies” Álvarez has written his own corrido, creating a harmony from these difficult, sometimes indescribable themes. Finding connection through the accordion, originally brought from far away but now an instrumental repository of a million immigrant stories, he has composed a classic melody.

Lorraine Berry is a writer and critic in Eugene, Oregon.