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>> Kelly: A harmonium is a small keyboard instrument
that creates sound by pumping bellows that blow air through free-standing reeds.
We’ll look at a brief history of the instrument, but first, local San Francisco musician Christi(e)
Chew will tell us how she got into the harmonium and will show us a bit about how it works.
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>> Christie: My name is Christi(e) Chew and this is my
harmonium. I heard a lot of bands playing it and I decided I wanted to get one, so I
found it online and learned how to play it because I know how to play the piano and have
been playing it ever since.
So on the harmonium, this is the pumping apparatus or the bellow. You squeeze this to supply
air to the instrument. Inside under this flap are the banks of brass reeds. When air passes
over them, that’s how it makes the sound. And this is this section is the keyboard and
that’s where I control what notes are being played. And some harmoniums have stops for
drones, but this is a pretty simple harmonium and it doesn’t have that.
>> Kelly: What you see Christi playing is a hand-pumped
harmonium, but the first harmoniums were larger and pumped by pedal.
What you see Christi playing is a hand-pumped harmonium, but the first harmoniums were larger
and pumped by pedal.
This pedal-pumped harmonium was like a smaller, cheaper version of a pipe organ, so it became
popular in churches.
They began to make even smaller versions that could fold up into a small suitcase or trunk
for traveling evangelists and missionaries. That’s how the hand-pumped harmonium made
its way east to India in the mid-1800s.
In India, the instrument became wildly popular after they improved upon the European model.
The harmonium has a long, rich history in South Asian music, though for a time, in 1940-1971,
it was banned on the government radio when nationalistic movements encouraged people
to rid themselves from all things Western. Today it is still used in North Indian classical
music as well as devotional music for Hindus, Sikhs and Sufis, and is found in many South
Asian homes.
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In the West, however, it reached its peak popularity around 1900. But by the 1930s,
it began to disappear when the electric organ came onto the scene.
These days, not many people in the West would be able to recognize a harmonium, though they’ve
probably heard it. Many well-known bands have used it, such as the Beatles, Pink Floyd,
Radiohead, Neil Young, Tori Amos, Tom Waits,
...and of course, our own local Christi(e) Chew.
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