McFilter

A New Musical Genre?

Last night we headed over to the polytechnic district of Torino for Jazz at the EDP, which I think was a slightly misleading title.

The EDP part was okay, as the event was at the Educatorio Della Provvidenza. It's the "Jazz" part that wasn't as convincing.

It wasn't like any jazz that I've heard, but then an accordion and harp duo aren't your typical jazz line-up. (I don't know what it is about accordion players in Torino, it must be the French influence, but there are a lot of them about. They regularly appear at restaurants in a similar manner to the obligatory flower-sellers. At one meal we were treated to three different accordion acts!)

Their choice of songs wasn't very jazz-inspired either, more popular classics or at a push I guess you could call it jazzed-up classics. I was trying to work out how to describe it when I was listening to it, and the nearest I could come was that it sounded like music from a TV drama. Given the audience's enthusiastic applause I imagined we were being regaled with classics from the past thirty years of Italian TV and I just didn't have the right collective memory to enjoy it.

Pondering the description further, on the way home, I hit upon Those Were The Days, My Friend as another similar track; at which point I identified the genre linking them all...

Songs with accordions in. Those Were The Days, My Friend, the Theme from Bergerac, the music of Duo Millemiglia (the duo playing at the EDP). Once you add an accordion, the pull of the songs-with-accordion genre is like a black hole.

However, I think we saw the best harp-and-accordion duo in the land last night. They were very talented and the music was better than I think I've made out so far - I don't think I'll go and see them again, but it wouldn't be the end of the world if I did. Our fellow concertgoers were much more impressed. At the end of the show there was such appreciation that they had to come out for three encores!

I haven't worked out if that was just Italian passion, and all events have such drawn out endings, or that the harp-accordion duo is a much celebrated Italian format and these guys are at the top.