The Accordion at a Ceilidh

The pipes own the Highland imagination, but the ceilidh floor belongs to another instrument: the accordion. The Scottish dance band's squeezebox, tuned and played for a particular rhythm, is what keeps a hall of dancers in step for three hours. It is also, by adoption, a thoroughly Scottish instrument with a thoroughly foreign birthplace.

How did the accordion come to the ceilidh?

The free-reed instruments arrived in Britain in the first half of the nineteenth century, cheap, loud and portable, and the country's dance music adopted them at once. In Scotland the piano accordion settled into the dance band beside fiddle and drums, and the smaller button-keyed instruments became the voice of regional styles. The pipes kept the ceremony and the glen; the accordion took the floor, because it could carry a melody, a rhythm and a bass line all at once for a hall full of sets.

The instrument's homeland, however, is a hill town in the Marche: Castelfidardo, where the Italian accordion trade grew from a single workshop in 1863 into an industry whose instruments went round the world. The story of that trade, its makers, models and regional styles, is kept by a site dedicated to Italian accordion traditions, from the diatonic organetto of the Abruzzi to the concert instruments of the Coupe Mondiale.

What does the dance band ask of the instrument?

Endurance and rhythm above all. A ceilidh accordion is played hard for a whole evening, driving a beat the dancers set their feet by, with the left hand carrying the bass and chords that make the harmonic floor of the set. The band's sound is built for recognition: the first bars of the Dashing White Sergeant must be unmistakable from across a noisy hall, because they are the instruction to form up.

The history of the accordion formalised that sound in the twentieth century, broadcasting it into every village hall and fixing the programme of dances that a modern ceilidh still follows.

What is the difference between the instruments at a ceilidh?

Two families of squeezebox share the floor's work. The piano accordion, keyed like a piano, is the standard of the dance band: chromatic, versatile and loud. The button accordion, or melodeon in its diatonic forms, is the older and sharper instrument, giving a driven, rhythmic sound that suits the single tunes of the sets. Between them sits the concertina family, rarer at a ceilidh but traditional in the smaller rooms. All three share the same principle, free reeds set singing by bellows, and all three can lead a dance.

The practical difference for the listener is tempo control. The bandleader with a good accordion under his hands holds the hall's rhythm like a driver holds a team, and the dancers never notice him doing it.

What should a ceilidh-goer listen for?

Listen for the lift. Good ceilidh music does not merely keep time; it lifts the set through the turn of the phrase, giving the dancers the surge that carries them through the figure. That lift is the accordion's particular gift, the bellows lending a push to the off-beat that a fiddle alone cannot supply.

It is also worth listening for the instrument's other life in the same evening's quiet tunes: the slow air and the waltz show the same box producing a different kind of voice, and the players who do both are the ones a dance band is built around.

Where does the instrument sit in Highland culture now?

Firmly inside it, as an honoured guest that became a citizen. The ceilidh would run on a fiddle and a piano, but it runs better on an accordion, and the instrument's place in the evening is as fixed as the programme of dances. For the dancer it is simply the band; for anyone curious about what is being played, the instrument's road from a Marche workshop to a Highland hall is a two-century lesson in how music travels.

The floor it plays for is the one described in the guide to a first ceilidh: same steps, same count, same long evening.

There is one more debt the ceilidh owes the instrument: it is teachable. A beginner with a small accordion and a teacher who plays for dances can be carrying a set within a year, because the instrument's layout rewards the ear over the eye. The village that wants a band next decade needs a youngster with a box this decade, and the ceilidh's survival has always depended on exactly that apprentice.