Accordionists and Ragtimers: The Devil’s Children
By Dr. Mark Birnbaum

Accordionists and ragtimers aren’t always mentioned in the same sentence. Perhaps they should be. Like ragtime pianists, accordionists are classically trained for a pop music world. The accordion is rare in the concert hall. It never got the respect that other instruments have. Still, it is a classical instrument – sort of.

It’s the sound – the reedy carnivalesque, visceral sound that makes it feel “unclassical”. For ragtime piano- it’s similar. No matter how well written it is-no matter how hard Scott Joplin fought to win a place for ragtime in the classical world, ragtime still functions like popular music.