The Bandoneon Player

When I was a kid, I took 8 years of accordion lessons. Why accordion? Coming from a family with a German ancestry, we had inherited a 12-bass accordion, so, naturally, that was the musical instrument to learn.

Now, years later, as a lapsed accordionist, I sometimes wonder at my failure to continue playing. Maybe it was socially unacceptable (uncool) to play accordion in the suburbs. Maybe I had no talent? Maybe both? To some extent, all this is tongue-in-cheek, but it does raise some important questions about human fulfillment. To what extent should we embrace our circumstances of life and develop them, and to what extent reject them in favor of some other endeavor with a higher social cachet? How does one fulfill one's individuality?

The issue is raised in Carlo Strenger's The Fear of Insignificance. Strenger is an Israeli psychologist. He writes (at pp. 87 ff) of the experience of Astor Piazzolla, who, when a youngster, partly because of his father's nostalgia for Argentina in New York, took up the bandonion and played tango in his teens in New York, actually making a living doing so. A meeting with Arthur Rubinstein led to his taking up classical composing, and later, at age 32, he got a scholarship with famed composer, conductor and teacher Nadia Boulanger. Boulanger took a look at his portfolio of classical compositions, but told him, I don't see Piazzolla in these. Where is he? Piazzolla rather shamedly confessed that he really just played the bandonion at cabarets. She asked him to play. When he did, she exclaimed, "You idot, that's Piazzolla!" He says, "And I took all the music I composed, ten years of my life, and sent it to hell in two seconds."

Piazzolla went on to become a legendary bandonion player and composer. While he spent years trying to become a classical composer and musician, this was someone other than who he was. Only when he abandoned this effort could he become who he really was.

Strenger writes, "Nadia Boulanger did something tremendous for him: she helped him to realize that he could never become a full-fledged composer if he remained disconnected from the musical traditions that had shaped him. This was the moment when Piazzolla ceased to shape himself along the image of composers that he admired. He began the process of active self-acceptance, the process in which self-knowledge is used to start shaping individuality that is truly ours and not a persona externally imposed on our natural propensities." Ibid at 88.

To me this ties in with the idea that God makes each person unique and wants him or her to develop his or her individual talents. Don't try to be someone else. Be yourself. God loves you as YOU! But many of us don't have the courage to be ourselves. And Strenger advises that to accomplish that requires you to be able to look at yourself, learn from others about yourself, be disciplined, and be able to withstand the psychic pain that comes from an unromantic look at who you are. We need courage, but also faith that we are worthwhile, that God made us to be something good. And that goodness includes our upbringing, and the formative influences it had on us.

So, shall I start practicing my accordion again? (Maybe only when everyone has left the house!)

Listen to Astor Piazzolla's "Oblivion"

Listen to Astor Piazzolla's "Libertango"

Listen to Astor Piazzolla's "Milonga del angel"

Listen to Las Rositas, "Eletrotango"

Listen to the Gotan Project, "Mi Confesion"

Listen to La Cumparsita