BEEF MUSIC:A SLOVENE FAVORITE WHICH IS ALSO A HIT WITH ME

Last night when we visited our daughter-in-law's super-nice family for a most delicious dinner, I asked her very cute adolescent brother about the accordion on his bed. He had just started taking lessons four years ago when we were here for the wedding, and he already sounded good then. Ditto for our daughter-in-law, who never had a lesson, but is very talented at most everything, including music.

An accordion is an essential element of a popular style of this country's music that's referred to as "beef music." I realized I had goofed when I asked Jan if he liked "cow music," and got a perplexed look. Once I corrected myself, we both agreed that we liked it. It is invariably cheerful and smile producing. Kind of like the tap dancing I still do.

Many Slovenes seem to make fun of it, but there is even a tv station that I'm watching right now that plays it 24/7. The singers wear what look like liederhosen, and every once in a while there's an actual "moo" or yodel.

Now compare that to those 145 church bongs at quarter to any early morning hour. Just try turning THEM on and off.

Oops! I must have missed the 9:45 set of bongs because I had my beef music volume turned way up. But something tells me that I will get another chance.

Here's the budding young accordionist resting after a long hard day of playing beef music. 

And here he is a year later, more grown up, but not too grown up to still play with dogs in strange Santa outfits or to make music.