The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 99

nm Giving accordions a good name by Elijah Wald hat do Tex-Mex, Irish, Cajun, jazz and avant-garde classical music have in common? Here's a hint: It is an instrument you used to see a kid playing on "Community Auditions," and you thanked God the kid did not live next door. One more hint: The kid was playing "Lady of Spain," and the encore was a polka. ACCORDIONS THAT SHOOK THE WORLD WHO: Savoy Doucet Cajun Band, Art Van Damme, Santiago Jimenez, Joe Burke, Guy Klucevsek. WHEN: Nov. 14, 8 p.m.

WHERE: Somerville Theater, 55 Davis Square, Somerville. Telephone World Music, 876-9240. TICKETS: $17.50. OTHER NEW ENGLAND DATES: Nov. 12, Veterans Memorial Auditorium, Providence.

Nov. 13, First Parish Church, Portland. Nov. 15, Ira Allen Chapel, University of Vermont, Burlington. Information: 207-761-0591 No problem, right? It's the accordion.

But how times change. Today, a wave of hard-rocking roots music from around the globe has brought the humble squeeze-box to undreamed-of heights. Lawrence Welk is forgotten, replaced by Los Lobos, the Pogues, Buckwheat Zydeco and the rhythms of Paul Simon's Graceland. Some of this music has been around for hundreds of years, aging like strong brandy in a host of ethnic communities. Some of it is brand new, fusing roots styles with everything from rock to the classics.

"Accordions that Shook the World," which appears in Somerville and three other New England venues this weekend, gives a taste of both old and new, featuring five internationally acclaimed accordion masters in five very different styles. The instruments are almost as varied as the music. Joe Burke, the king of Irish players, uses a two-row button accordion, or "button box." Santiago Jimenez plays his Tex-Mex i kas with the Tex-Mex beat." Santiago Sr. made his first records in 1929, and in the following decades his accordion-based sound swept the southwestern states and Mexico. The most ornate of button accordion styles, it is driving, dance-hall music with an irresistable rhythm.

In the 70s, it crossed over into rock when Santiago's elder son, Flaco, a virtuosic performer who now tours as a member of the Texas Tornadoes, teamed with Ry Cooder. While his brother updated Tex-Mex and attained cross-over stardom, Santiago Jr. has kept their father's original sound. Modern Tex-Mex players ignore their left hand, even removing the reeds from that side of the instrument, but he still plays a full, two-handed style. "I got to have those basses," he says.

"If you give me an accordion and it doesn't have the bajo, forget it. Because I have to play what I feel, and I want the people to feel what they are hearing." Similarly, he is the only well-known player not to use drums. "I play with only the tolo-loche (double bass), the bajo sexto (12-string guitar), and the accordion," he says. "I love that sound. It is very pure.

And I am the only one in San Antonio still playing my father's music." The accordion revival was spearheaded by artists like Jimenez, playing such roots styles as Tex-Mex, Cajun, and zydeco, but it has led to increased recognition for some players who are anything but traditional. On this program, the outstanding innovator is Klucevsek, a composer and virtuoso in the "new music" field. A Slovenian-American, Klucevsek started out playing polkas and classical music. "It was sort of schizophrenic," he says, speaking from his home on Long Island. "I was asking my teacher for Frank Yankovich books, but on the other hand the stuff that he was specifically training me for was classical." Klucevsek combined these interests when he commissioned "Polka on the Fringe," a series of 30 short accordion polkas by New York avant-garde composers.

It is a startling and fascinating collection, ranging from bright, dancing melodies to flat-out atonal weirdness. On other recordings, Klucevsek's accordion technique often goes way out into uncharted territory, brilliantly negotiating the cartoon-classical gymnastics of pieces such as John Zorn's "Road Runner." "Zorn wants to know all of the nether regions of your instrument," Klucevsek says. "All the special effects it can do, all of the extended techniques. Then he also brings in references to music that's associated with your instrument that you perhaps would like to have forgotten." Like the sort of music kids used to play on Community Auditions? "Yes, that sort of thing." conjunto music on the three-row diatonic. Cajun master Marc Savoy makes and plays the older one-row style.

As for the formally schooled musicians, Art Van Damme, the father of jazz accordion, plays the most familiar instrument, with buttons on the left hand but a piano-style keyboard on the right, while avant-garde innovator Guy Klucevsek plays a piano accordion with the more complex "free bass" left-hand arrangement. At 72, Van Damme is the senior member of the troup. "I started when I was 9 years old, in 1929," he says, speaking from his home in Scottsdale, Ariz. "I studied classical for 10 years, then I became interested in swing. I wanted to play like Benny Goodman would play the clarinet.

There was nobody teaching that, so I had to listen to records and work it out." Van Damme's big break came in the '40s, when his quintet became a house band for NBC. He played with stars such as Ella Fitzgerald and Dizzy Gillespie, recorded more than 40 albums, and regularly took top honors in the Downbeat magazine jazz poll. "They had the accordion category for 10 years, and I won it for 10 years," he recalls. "Then they discontinued it." "The accordion was a very, very popular instrument many years ago," Van Damme says. "But when rock came in, that changed everything.

Now they make jokes about it, they think all you can do is play a polka or something like that, but that's something I got away from completely while I was still in high school." While Van Damme was escaping the polka world, some Texas players were making it the basis for a new style. "The Tex-Mex music was pioneered by my father," Santiago Jimenez says, speaking from his San Antonio home. "His name was Santiago also, and he had the name Flaco, 'the He used to go to hear the German people play in the 1920s, to hear the polkas and the waltzes. That is where he got the idea of composing his own polkas and redobas. But the German people played slower than we do; we play our pol Santiago Jimenez (top) plays a three-row diatonic, while avant-garde Guy Klucevsek plays a piano accordion.

Elijah Wald is a free-lance writer. 9.