ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that the combination of cliche, marginality, and nostalgia, vehicled principally by the accordion in Yann Tiersen's music. It reviews the history of the accordion, and its use in French cinema. Underlying the argument will be the point that 'accordion music', whatever the forms it takes, is in essence a pre-existing music because of its cultural connotations. The history of the accordion in popular French culture overlaps considerably with the older history of the guinguettes. The accordion is used prominently in two well-known films of the 1930s, Sous les toits de Paris, and La Belle Equipe. The 1950s were the apogee of the accordion's role in the cinema, but they also saw the beginning of its decline, unsurprisingly paralleling its development outside film theatres. During the 1990s, the accordion made a hesitant comeback. Tiersen is a classically trained multi-instrumentalist composer-musician from Brittany, who moved towards rock music in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
