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.
This was all meant to be a little piece about Vesoul, as Brel goes through a breathless tirade about a relationship unraveling during a kind of roadtrip through France and the list of towns is like the ups and downs of the relationship.
Azzola’s accordion defined the mood and its fast-paced, chaotic and one of my favorites from Brel.
I was going to write about Brel, but the accordion took over…
K
Vesoul Jacques Brel & Marcel Azzola - 1969
This track defined the musical chemistry between Brel and Azzola, setting the tone for their collaborations over the next decade.
Brel’s shout of “Chauffe, Marcel!” became their signature moment—half encouragement, half celebration, unleashing Azzola to cut loose with the full emotional range of his accordion.
(You can hear it at at 2:48, though he says, Chauffe! Chauffe! a few times. These guys knew they had a hot number…)
Azzola’s playing didn’t just support Brel’s songs; it sparred with them, elevated them, turned them into something theatrical and electric.
If you just want a song, stop now because I get into a lot of accordion history, my own personal connections with the accordion and, if you keep going, an odd subculture of Polkamania and TikTok trends of helmeted accordion players.
There is no need to go further than this. I just can’t help myself with some of this…
K
Dad’s accordion
I used to think the accordion was a bit of a joke - hokey, old-timey, something my dad would’ve liked.
As it turns out, he did. He played one. Or so I’ve been told, often with a drink nearby and a grin on his face, entertaining himself at parties (and possibly some of his guests) with some unhinged polka repertoire.
In the U.S., the accordion inherited that cheesy image—thanks mostly to its polka-era* heyday in the 1950s and ‘60s.
As the 1970s rolled around, my father put down the accordion forever, along with much of the United states and the anglophone world.
once rock and roll took over, the accordion got boxed up with the bingo cards and bratwurst. My father’s own accordion lay disused, like some long-fossilized dinosaur bones of an instrument, never to be played again.
The rest of the world
In the anglophone world, accordions are treated like punchlines or they’re used to give something a foreign flourish.
Accordions have been “othered,” but that wasn’t always the case
the instrument remains popular just about everywhere else in the world, there are at least a dozen distinct musical styles from northen Mexico to the Domincan Republic to Venezuala, to Peru, Chile and, of course, with tango in Argentina.
It was adapted to Algerian raï and shows up in more countries in Asia, Africa and Europe. It is there, without irony, on every continent except Oceania.
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the Polka dot com bubble?
The accordion was invented in the early 19th century, and with it came a musical craze that lasted a century: Polka. From the 1830s-1880s, polka was popular everywhere, from London to New York to all of the growing cities of the world – including the anglophone world.
And yes, it was called Polkamania. Newspapers and magazines covered it endlessly, publishing polka lyrics and sheet music to boost sales.
Polka was youth culture – more lively, and even rebellious, compared to rigid and formal dances of the time.
The accordion defined that sound like the guitar would define rock and roll.
Polkamania swept through the anglophone world as well. From London to New York, the accordion and polka dancing were at the center of popular entertainment.
The pattern, “polka dots” had nothing to do with the music or dance, but was just named that to capitalize on the trend, maybe like grunge fashion was in the 1990s.
In the U.S., polka dominated the airwaves deep into the 1940s and 1950s, but clearly overdid it, as disco did in the 1970s and saxophone use in the 1980s.
national pride
There were also sveral major accordion makers in France, adding something to the national pride of it all, whereas there were more American guitar makers than accordion makers.
An accordion is easy to play, or so I have been told, but hard to make: nearly 6,000 parts go into each one, a new one can be costly and difficult to maintain, according to Maugein, the last remaining French accordion maker.
If you add the disruptions of the war era to production in general, it’s likely fewer and fewer accordions were being exported for many years while the relatively simple guitar, even once electrified, was more easily available.
There’s something charming and old-world about the accordion, which gives it a kind of niche popularity in France, even if I can’t think of a single person who willingly puts on accordion music just to listen, except maybe those massive legions of very self aware Weird Al Yankovic fans.
Still, the charm is there.
The Soundtrack of Paris (for Tourists )
Spend a day wandering through Montmartre or along the Seine, and you’ll likely hear someone playing “La Vie en Rose” or “Sous le Ciel de Paris” on an accordion, at least if your’e wandering in the tourist areas. In Nantes, there is a guy who plays Stairway on the Accordion on one of the main thoroughfares
To many tourists, it’s as Fench as berets, striped shirts and scooters. To locals, it’s part nostalgia, part stereotype. Maybe, like me, it is the music of their parents.
Still, the instrument endures in cultural memory in part due to movies, with soundtracks using the accordion not for kitsch value, but as atmosphere - a distinctly French atmosphere.
How the accordion got squeezed out
As pop music turned introspective and image-conscious, the accordion’s joyful, communal energy started to feel out of place. Maybe as individualism took off in the US, more guitars solos than accordion sing alongs went with it?
Once the guitar arrived in force—especially in American and British music—it became everything: rhythm, melody, solo, identity.
Even combinations like with Brel and Azzola above are less common today outside of classic music circles.
A lot of this also has to do with the electrification and digitization of everything, but it’s also a matter of looks and tastes.
You just can't lean back and shred like Hendrix or Slash with a 20-pound instrument strapped to your chest. Leather pants seem out of place with the accordion. It’s hard to smolder with a squeezebox.
Weird Al tries and it looks, well, how it looks.
Instruments do go out of style
The guitar certainly had its place in France but it rarely stole the show. It countered with chanson, lent color to folk, and Django Reinhardt’s (the "D" is silent) gypsy jazz redefined guitar.
But even with its rise in French pop and rock, the guitar never eclipsed the accordion’s cultural weight—or its unmistakably French voice, even if that voice seems cliched and old timey, there is still a place for the instrument in French culture .
The saxophone defined the '80s, until its emotional wail became shorthand for cheesy excess. Now it only shows up when someone wants something to sound retro.
Who Can It Be Now?* Men at Work - 1981
Horns and reed instruments in general have faded from the mainstream.*
If you are one of those people that misses that sound, you can understand accordion fans. The accordion didn’t die, it was put away, a dead relic of a bygone era, while newer, louder, more electrified instruments took over.
One became the sound of the future; the other, the past.
The sax was once super cool.
So too, was the accordion.
The following section is totally unnecessary, but here it is anyway:
Notes from above
* About Who Can It Be Now?
From the comments of the video:
:He was living next door to a drug dealer in Saint Kilda, Melbourne and he wrote this about people and dodgy characters constantly knocking at his flat as they'd get the wrong door. It left him feeling shaken as he never knew who next was coming to his door.”
**Both the clarinet and the recorder were taught in my elementary school, as was polka and square dancing in gym, part of a curriculum rooted in Henry Ford’s push to promote white traditions over jazz in the 1920s.
And that was still happening in suburban New York in the 1980s.
More random notes
Man, this one was the mother of all rabbit holes.
Accordion subculture is weird and entertaining, so I am going to include some of the oddities below.
More Songs With Accordion
“Constant Craving” – k.d. lang
“Fairytale of New York” – The Pogues, where the accordion is arguably the soul of the song
“Road to Nowhere” – Talking Heads - featuring Esteban “Steve” Jordan, Texas accordion legend known for trippy solos, flamboyant outfits, and crocodile-skin eye patch.
Helmets and Accordions
There seems to be a subculture of accordionists performing in helmets. please believe me, I did not originally seek this out.
The accordion just seems to be an instrument that frees people to be weird.