Chauffe, Marcel!: How the Accordion Became France’s Soundtrack—and Then Vanished

From Parisian cafés to polkamania and helmeted TikTok buskers, a breathless journey through accordion history, French identity, and why the instrument still won’t go away

There are few stereotypical sounds of France quite like the accordion. It's almost exclusively a sound of the export version of the country, but still, a few wistful notes drifting from a street corner conjure Paris in an instant—cobblestones, café tables, baguettes, berets, etc. But this isn’t just tourist bait. The accordion was woven into the fabric of French cultural identity since the 19th century, rising through bal musette dance halls and chanson to become the heartbeat of popular music for decades.

The accordion’s popularity was over a century long, beginning with its creation in the 1830s to the postwar boom and then to movie soundtracks. The accordion defined France’s emotional register at home and abroad, even as its nostalgic sound seems out of step with the noise of the modern world of today.