Big Squeeze, Second Wind Accordion Repair’s Kalei Yamanoha

As I stood in Kalei Yamanoha’s workshop, I regarded the accordion—really, confronting the instrument for the first time in my 42 years. 

That’s my work. Conceptually, the accordion is quite ingenious (insane), consisting of one set of piano keys and one set of buttons blocking reeds and forming chords on each of two banks of “harmonicas” held between a billows, sucking and compressing a captive wind. 

Mechanically, the accordion is quite complex, representing the apogee (apoplexy) of high Victorian machine-making. Some vintage accordions have as many as 2,000 parts. 

Which is why, Yamanoha explained to me, new accordions can cost upwards of $7,000 and why old ones are frequently badly out of tune.

He has kindly stepped forward to mend these two issues with his new business, Second Wind Accordions, and to amend—with good humor, the disrespect for what is often held to be an outmoded novelty instrument. Here I will point out that he has kindly composed, just for us, a playlist designed to raise the instrument in our eyes. I invite the reader to listen along with me by scanning the QR code below.

Yamanoha seems born to step into this economic niche. Literally—he was born and raised across the street from La Plaza de Cotati, where the venerable Cotati Accordion Festival is annually staged. At the age of 15, he bought his first squeeze box, forsaking punk rock for the deeper subversion of “gypsy jazz,” later forming the much beloved and piratical Oddjob Ensemble.

Nine years ago, Yamanoha  left the county, first for New Orleans and then to Hawaii, to pursue his family roots. He has now returned to us to open shop, as much to preserve the complex “oral tradition” of accordion repair as to run a rare business. To his certain knowledge, he is one of just two repairpersons of his age and generation in California—and has the only dedicated shop in the North Bay.

“I go back to the Hawaiian perspective in which everything has a genealogy,” he told me. “Whether it’s your family or your education, everything has a lineage. For me to continue this work, I am honoring my teacher, and my teacher’s teacher and their  families, passing on the knowledge they passed to me.

Cincinnatus Hibbard: Who taught you accordion repair?

Kalei Yamanoha: I apprenticed and worked for Skylar Fell and his wife, Melody, at Accordion Apocalypse [in Petaluma].

You feel accordions have been unfairly given a bad rap?

I feel that in the ’50s America, it became a novelty instrument. But prior to the invention of the electric guitar, the accordion was the popular instrument. I have similar feelings about the [Hawaiian] ukulele. It is unfairly seen as an annoying ‘toy’ instrument.

I understand you became a ukulele maker during your time in Hawaii.

Yes. I dove really hard into studying and playing Hawaiian music. My father and uncles played Hawaiian music in a band, Kolohe [meaning rascal] Patrol, and my auntie had a hula halau [school of Hawaiian dance, culture and language].

I understand you will now be continuing the Oddjob Ensemble with circus and theater performance, but you will be debuting a new sound at the Railroad Square Music Fest.

I will be performing traditional Hawaiian music under my own name, in a way that honors the tradition but adds my own style and flair.

Will you be playing accordion?

Oh, I guarantee.

Learn more: For repair and sales, visit secondwindaccordionrepair.com. Yamanoha will be performing at the Cotati Accordion Festival Aug. 15 and Railroad Square Music Fest in Santa Rosa Sept. 20.