RE: [Harp-L] Harmonica in the Mexican Revolution



The played-at-home-seldom-recorded syndrome pops up in Cajun music,
where accordion has greater visibility and prestige (and loudness), and
in native american music in Canada, where the fiddle has greater
visibility and prestige (though it isn't much louder) and the harmonica
was more likely to be played by women at home in the kitchen. The
harmonica, being small and inexpensive and promoted as an impulse buy
and a toy, has often escaped notice and escaped being taken seriously
when it was noticed. Similar things could have happened in Mexico.

I've also heard of a syndrome whereby people play harmonicas when
that's all they can afford. Times get better, they buy a fiddle or a
guitar or a squeezebox.

I suspect that Mr. Veerkamp used inexpensive harmonicas to get people
addicted to free reed instruments, then got them to spring for the
"hard stuff"  - a nice three-row norteño accordion, maybe. That his
company is still in business in Mexico a century after he broke ground
for Hohner in that part of the world is a testament to his marketing
acumen.

Winslow

--- Rick Dempster <rick.dempster@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> I've listened to a good deal of older ethnic & regional music from
> Mexico and other Latin American countries. The harmonica is very
> rarely
> heard. I'm talking here of music recorded pre-war. If the instrument
> was
> common 'south of the border' then it was for home entertainment only.
> Plenty of accordion down that way then, but virtually no harmonics.
> RD



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