Representations and Perceptions of the Collective Imaginary of Trikitixa in its Process of Rooting in The Basque Popular Culture: 1889-1937

Abstract

The Basque-style diatonic accordion or trikitixa arrived in the Basque Country in the last decades of the 19th century to take root in popular culture and fully integrate with Basque identity during the first decades of the 20th century, thus defining itself as a new cultural input in a context of accelerated socioeconomic transformations that led the incipient Basque nationalism to have to define what, as far as culture is concerned, it considered properly Basque. The nationalist discourse based on the purity of the Basque identity represented a campaign of contempt towards the newcomer accordion to which the elitist classes joined to belittle everything considered popular. The article compares the magnitude of the rejection messages received by the trikitixa with what was perceived by the Basque society as a whole, in order to show to what extent, the attempted dismissal of cultural expression permeated the collective imagination that the participants of popular festivities formed about the instrument.