Accordionists in D.C.: They Aim To Squeeze

Moceo started playing at age 5 after seeing the instrument in a kindergarten performance. "I'm the only one from all my friends that plays," he says. "I like it. I like being the individual."

And the perks aren't bad either. Moceo has traveled across the country for competitions and shows. Two years ago, he flew to Burbank, Calif., for an appearance on Ellen DeGeneres's TV talk show, where he performed a version of Green Day's "American Idiot."

It's the only life he can imagine. "Without the accordion, I'd just be another drummer or something," he says.

You have to learn the instrument as a child, says Busso. Otherwise, it's too hard to master the 120 buttons on the bass side and 43 keys on the treble that operate the accordion's 2,000 movable parts.

Busso's son and daughter grew up in Accordion Universe, learning at ages 5 and 4, respectively. "I ran a school on the first floor of the house," Busso explains. "You eat, you sleep, you play the accordion. That was it."

His daughter, Christina Busso Lammers, 29, a Washington lawyer by day, still breaks out the accordion at night. "It's a very physical instrument," she says. "Some people come home and go for a run or lift weights. I play the accordion and I feel pretty good about it."

And so it is at the Coupe Mondiale. The accordion as uniter of families, as breadwinner, as instrument of seduction, as the varsity letter's superior.

"No matter what, life would have brought me to the accordion," Moceo says. In Accordion Universe, it could not be any other way.