This new music became especially popular during the German occupation (1940-1944), because the dance halls were closed and people turned to jazz concerts instead. In the late 1930s, some younger accordionists enjoyed American jazz so much that they created the swing musette, mixing both styles. Big names of this era include Emile Vacher (1883-1969), often credited as the real inventor of the musette style, the Péguri brothers (Charles Péguri was one of the first accordionists to play alongside a cabretteplayer, who happened to be his own father-in-law, Antoine Bouscatel) and Henri Momboisse (1889-1960).
![modern french cafe music with accordion modern french cafe music with accordion](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/01/c2/d3/01c2d3c36b0b9c98d25d21fe751cd36d--french-cafe-french-photographers.jpg)
![modern french cafe music with accordion modern french cafe music with accordion](https://cdn.bandsforhire.net/media/k2/galleries/380/image3.jpeg)
Alongside the accordion, a typical bal musette orchestra often included the banjo (sometimes played by a Gypsy musician) and the j& acircze (drums, from the American word 'jazz'). They imposed a new repertoire: the valse musette (waltz), the java(derived from the mazurka) and the foxtrot amongst other styles. The first musette accordionists of the 1920s and early 1930s made people dance in the shady dance halls of the Bastille area. The rest is history: the accordion soon became the symbol of Paris! A new music was born, which kept the name musette or bal musette. They started playing alongside small-pipe players, eventually replacing them. The Gare de Lyon train station, leading to Italy, was not far away, and many migrants from the other side of the Alps settled in the area, bringing with them their accordions.
![modern french cafe music with accordion modern french cafe music with accordion](https://cdn.bandsforhire.net/media/k2/galleries/380/image8.jpg)
There, in courtyards, people danced the emblematic bourréeto the sound of the cabrette (also called musette), the Auvergnat small-pipe. At the time, café-charbons of the Bastille area were owned by people from the Auvergne, a mountainous region in central France. Like tango in Buenos Aires or rebetika in Athens, Parisian bal musette is an urban musical style born in the early twentieth century from a melting pot of cultures.