Accordion Youth Summit (AYS)

January 1st 2021
Joseph Natoli

Anyone reading this article will most likely agree that the best way to secure the future and visibility of the accordion would be to make certain that enough young people become interested in pursuing and utilizing all the incredible traits of this wonderful instrument. But how should that topic and effort be approached?

Well, this has been attempted many times before, has it not? Many of you who have belonged to accordion organizations over the years know that it is almost a ritual at any one of those events to have a final membership meeting where “attracting more youth” is the main topic of discussion. This ritual has persisted for the last 50+ years without much tangible success. Freud tells us that the definition of insanity is “doing the same thing over and over again, while expecting a different result.”

Therefore, the Accordion Youth Summit is a strategic and calculated attempt to try something different, because as mentioned, our previous efforts simply have not seen the results we were all hoping for in spite of many well-meaning efforts. Our membership and ranks keep getting older and leaner while any expanding younger membership interested in our instrument is minimal to non-existent. We MUST do something different if we are to achieve more positive and lasting results. Our current situation is not sustainable.

Therefore, the Accordion Youth Summit has been formed and will meet for the first time on Jan 9 ,2021 Sat at 3:00pm EST. If you have any interest in attending the first meeting to either audit what will be discussed or if you feel you have meaningful information and techniques to contribute, please reach out to Joseph Natoli at josephnatoli66@gmail.com to request an invitation and a meeting agenda. You will be happily accommodated. At this writing (12/29/20), we have about 40+ people committed to attending from all over the US and Canada, which hopefully will expand internationally in subsequent meetings.

The idea of AYS in short is simply to move our thinking out of the historical individual silos of accordion organizations into a more creative, diverse, and collaborative platform for as many different organizations nationally and internationally as possible. We want to build a synergistic coalition of many diverse minds to tackle a problem that needs critical and creative thinkers. Their focus will be to help analyze, discuss, and develop solutions toward this topic of engaging more young people to become happily motivated and involved with our instrument. Many of you already have experience in this area and have done well. But frankly you have not had the support of an entire international community which is why you possibly have not met even your own expectations or become even more visible.

If you love the accordion for the incredible instrument that it is, if you want to see it flourish in the future, then we must get youth interested in learning and performing on the instrument in growing numbers. You are more than welcome to participate by reaching out to Joe Natoli again at the email provided. We look forward to hearing from you. See you on 1/9/21 Sat at 3:00pm EST!