Interview with Armand Labrecque About Learning to Play the Accordion
Audio: Armand Labrecque interviewed by Camille Brochu. Archives of the Musée de l’accordéon. 1995.
Photograph: Archives of the Musée de l’accordéon. Photo credit: Kim Gingras. 2022.
Armand Labrecque: I can even see how much things have evolved. It’s so easy these days, with recording equipment and so on. Having recordings of the tunes, things have really changed. If you take the top musicians from my time, excluding me, and [compare them to] the top musicians today… they’ve left a fine legacy. But they’re not in the same league as today’s young musicians.
Today, young people are able to master the instrument at the age of 10, 12, 15. I can’t get over it. And they can play the songs so well because they have such a good foundation in music. We didn’t have that. We’d listen to tunes that had been badly recorded, often with mistakes. And we didn’t have recording equipment. Anyway, we’d always forget two or three notes right off the bat. But that was how it was. We took what we could get, but the music wasn’t as refined as it is today.
Today… I find it extraordinary how today’s musicians, whether they play the harmonica, accordion, fiddle… There are some really good musicians today. A lot of them! That’s what I find really great! It means we’ve been able to build on the legacy of those who came before. So, we’ve done our bit by building on their work, and I think that’s helped move things forward, especially since we now have beautiful music, very good music with good instruments too. Whether its fiddles or guitars, whatever, the instruments are refined!