Courtesy photo Rupa & the April Fishes recently signed to the Cumbancha label. The founder believes music ‘can help open a doorway to other cultures.’

Expect the eighth annual International Accordion Festival to bring out the squeezebox cultural revolutionaries.

The members of this year’s jet-setting lineup have more than a few stamps on a passport. They’re bringing global music to S.A. in an effort to educate while they entertain Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 11-12.

Of special focus this year is Eastern Europe’s Roma music, which some might associate with Gypsy culture. Festivalgoers can expect to see the edgy Serbian band Kal perform, as well as Bulgaria’s Neshko Neshev and Romania’s Andrei Mihalache. Balkan influences dip into other bands as well. For instance, accordionist Isabel Douglass of the San Francisco-based band Rupa & the April Fishes studied the Romani/Gypsy playing style in Romania and Serbia.

Getting a foreign injection is part of what makes the festival the delight of 20,000 to 25,000 visitors every year.

“One of the things that’s really important to us is that the accordion is often stereotyped as in the domain of fussy older music,” says Pat Jasper, the festival’s artistic director. “But, in fact, it is an instrument that has informed some of the most vibrant music from around the world.”

Jasper says the instrument became popular because of how portable accordions are compared to, say, a piano.
“The accordion is loud,” Jasper says. “You can take all your furniture out of your house and push the rugs back and put the band in the corner. The accordion is the original ..... answer before amplification.”

Jasper also says that an accordion is versatile in that it can be an instrument for both bass and melody. And trendsetting bands, such as Gogol Bordello and Gotan Project, which performed at the Austin City Limits Music Festival in the past two years, have made squeezebox players star performers.

“No. 1, the accordion has become exceedingly popular in lots of pop music, in roots music, in Americana,” Jasper says. “Also, there’s a real world-music scene that is very hip and very happening.”

On the forefront of that scene is the band Rupa & the April Fishes, which wraps world musical styles in a melodious package. Rupa Marya, who is a physician in addition to being bandleader, vocalist and guitarist, has found influences in French chanson, Argentinean tango, Indian ragas and Gypsy swing.

Marya says her band was brought together by a common vision.

“The vision is creating a sound that gives voice to a complex musical identity and an identity that’s connected to street and folk traditions from around the world that can allow people to forget for a moment where they are ..... through mixing different musical cultures to create a boundless musical identity,” Marya says. “Using old ideas and old themes and old instruments, like, our band is completely acoustic, and reinterpreting this for a modern audience.”

Marya has a special fondness for the accordion.

“I just love the whimsy and celebration and the heartache,” Marya says of the accordion. “The expressive range is unbelievable. It has the quality of the human voice because the bellows, the breathing that goes through the instrument. ..... I think it’s an exciting instrument, and I love playing with Isabel.”

But performances are only a portion of what the accordion festival has to offer. Aficionados and newcomers will better understand the music by attending the workshops. Jasper says the workshops “unpack” the music for listeners and give them a sense of the accordion’s history and “how it’s stayed alive in environments where it’s extremely supported or environments where it’s extremely endangered.”

“People come out to see the style of music that they know and love,” Jasper says. “But they always stick around to see the style of music that they didn’t know existed.”

Dragan Ristic, who composes songs and performs guitar and lead vocals for the band Kal, hopes to open some eyes to the world of Roma culture through his music. Kal’s sound would not be what it is without accordionists Dragan Mitrovic and Jovica Maric.

“In Serbia, one of the domestic music instruments is the accordion,” Ristic says. “That means the Roma people took these traditional instruments and made from that music gorgeous things.”

Ristic works to marry the traditional and the modern through Kal’s lively style.

“I have to find my own musical identity in this world,” Ristic says. “That means that, simply, I’m using Romani traditional music from Serbia. ..... And then musically, I’m trying to analyze it from the perspective of the person who is living this century ..... who likes extremely rock ’n’ roll and all kinds of contemporary music. ..... I’m Roma, and in the musical context, I’m adding this in my, how can I say, imagination of the music.”

Bringing Roma identity to the forefront of the music is important to Sani Rifati, president of the nonprofit Voice of Roma as well as Kal’s tour manager. Rifati says his organization works to fight ignorance about the Roma people and dispel myths about Gypsy characters.

“You have these deep stereotypes of crystal ball and golden tooth and hooped earring,” Rifati says. “Most of the time, none of the Roma looks like what you saw in the Hollywood movies. ..... The music is a magnet. If you see any kind of Romani music, it’s rebellion.”

“The festival is great fun,” agrees Jasper. “But there’s also really serious biz that this music is about. A lot of these people are cultural warriors in their own right.”