French musette, Paris musette, or bal musette, is Parisian instrumental dance music of, say, the 1880's through 1940s, originally played by denizens of lower-class urban ghettos where poor laborers from the French countryside (the Auvergne) mixed with immigrants from Italy as well as Belgian gypsies. Folk-dance forms from rural France hybridized with Italian and gypsy strains to produce bal musette, which was played in disreputable bars and dance halls frequented by gangsters, gamblers, pimps, ladies of the night, and various Bohemian characters.
Whereas the cornemeuse or French bagpipes were the chief bellows instrument in rural French folk dance, in the new Paris bal musette genre the accordeon was front and center. Bal musette dance forms included the java, the paso doble, the polka, the fox-trot, the tango, and, of course, la valse. Where almost all European countries and regions of course have waltzes, the musette waltz would be from the bal musette genre, which developed a repertoire of famous and popular musette waltzes, many of them composed by some of the accordeon musette masters, such as Emile Vacher or Gus Viseur. Such as "L'Indifference," above, by Tony Murena and Gus Viseur. Here is Tony Murena and his ensemble playing this valse musette:
Bal musette was swingier and more syncopated than the traditional waltz dance forms of the rural Auvergne, and as the 1930s flowed into the 1940s it morphed into le jazz swing of the great Django Reinhardt, a Belgian gypsy who cut his teeth as a young tyro playing bal musette in the dives of Montmartre. Guitar and violin came more to the forefront, but accordion virtuosos were right in there too.
The old-fashioned accordion tuning was wetter, like a wet MMM, and one can still do bal musette this way. But over time many of the virtuosos began to favor drier tunings, like the Tony Murena clip i linked above. Basically, you can play a musette waltz at any setting from dry to very wet and from MMM to MM to M, with impunity!
BTW--the accordions in the real Paris musette clips from the 1930s and 1940s have something of a different timbre from today's typical Italian or German box--there are experts here more knowledgeable than I, but something in the reed/soundboard/chassis placement gives them a more pointed sound. You can still have this from French accordion makers Cavagnolo or Maugein. But really, musette sounds fantastic on regular Italian accordions as well as German Hohners or Weltmeisters.
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