Trikiti: France musical instrument

The trikiti is a two-row Basque diatonic button accordion that has right-hand rows and keyed a fifth octave apart and twelve unisonoric bass buttons. The onomatopoeia instrument, seemingly stemming from the sound that is produced by the tambourine, originally referred to a traditional Basque group that is made up of the musical instrument that now bears the name and the alboka, txistu and other musical instruments.

source of picture: nabasque.org

The first written evidence of the musical instrument is attested in the later part of the 19^th century, in 1889 to be précised, when diatonic accordion was first used for music in a well-known pilgrimage festivity of the Urkiola. A trikiti appears in a picture that was taken in Altsasu, a railway junction in 1890. Therefore, some point to the import of the musical instrument to the Basque country from Italy via the port of Bilboa, while some other sources propose that this type of diatonic accordion was brought in by Italian or French railway workers that are from the Alps.

The pair of diatonic button accordion together with the tambourine simultaneously grew in popularity and was later adopted in popular and local festivals, where the young people dance to the tunes of the musical instrument, regardless of the resistance of the Catholic Church, who dubbed it ‘hell bellows’ on the grounds that the dancing pattern and lively music would lead the Basque youth to serious temptations.

The playing style of the musical instrument remained the same up to the 1980s, when Kapa Junkera and Joseba Tapia began to build unique ways of playing the instrument. Some other good players of the musical instrument that helped in changing the playing pattern of the trikiti are; Aliatz Telletxea, Maixa Lizarribar and Iker Geonaga. Currently, traditional pattern groups made up of a pair playing the trikiti, tambourine and voice. Players of the instrument classically use a heavily ornamented and swift pattern, together with the staccato triplets.