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Accordionists in Croatia (Split), 2013. Courtesy of the author.

The accordion is a musical instrument consisting of two wooden boxes. The musician uses the one on the right to play the main melody and the one on the left for the bass and the chords of the accompaniment. The bellows is between the two boxes. Accordionists use their arms to open and close the bellows to allow air to flow and vibrate the reeds in each of the wooden boxes to produce sound. There are two types of accordions, with buttons or keys on the right.

The accordion was brought to the Basque Country, as to many other places of Europe and the Americas, after the success of its invention in Vienna in 1829. The first accordion was brought here by the workers from the French and Italian Alps who came to lay the first railway tracks at the end of the 19^th century.
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