Accordion at the picket lines: Paul Stein’s lifelong soundtrack of protest

Accordion player Paul Stein has shared the stage with Russia’s Kirov Orchestra, has played in a Park Slope wedding procession, and for 42 years, has played at Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners sponsored by the Goddard Riverside Community Center. He’s also entertained at countless cocktail parties, Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, street fairs, and community festivals. But the Sunset Park resident is probably best known for his nearly-ubiquitous musical presence at protests for peace and social justice.

Stein got his euphonic start at age seven, when he began studying the flutephone, a small, plastic wind instrument. A year later, he moved on to the accordion, an instrument popularized in the early 1950s by TV stars Lawrence Welk and Myron Floren. Stein remembers sitting on his living room floor to watch The Lawrence Welk Show, a once-weekly variety show, and being captivated by what he saw and heard. Music lessons at the Harbor Conservatory of Music in Hewlett, New York, began in 1956, when he was eight.

“Harbor Conservatory was a little neighborhood music school, a few rooms above a store, but the teachers were all professional musicians,” Stein recalls. He quickly became hooked, learning the era’s most popular songs and the Yiddish and Hebrew music he heard in synagogue. Then, in 1961, after five years of playing on rented instruments, Stein’s parents bought him his first accordion. He was 13.

Although Stein eventually became a public interest lawyer, his turn toward political activism began when he was in college and he frequently attended protests against both the Vietnam War and South Africa’s discriminatory apartheid system. Nonetheless, he says that he initially kept his musical and activist lives separate. “Although guitars were always present at the demonstrations and rallies of the 1960s and 70s, I somehow didn’t think to bring my accordion,” he says.

This changed in 1982. By that point, Stein was working at the Legal Aid Society as a staff attorney in the Juvenile Rights Division, but shortly after taking the job the Association of Legal Aid Attorneys, the staff union, voted to strike. “I wasn’t going to cross a picket line and even though I was still on probation as a new hire, I wasn’t going to scab, so I joined the walkout,” Stein told The Sunset Post. “I ended up bringing my accordion to the picket line. The strike took place during the winter holidays, so I played Christmas carols and union songs and ended up having the best ‘job’ of any of the strikers.”

Since then, Stein has brought his accordion to countless protests, job actions, and political events, including 2011’s Occupy Wall Street encampment in Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park. There, he met members of an eight-person band called Filthy Rotten System; he has now played with them for 14 years. He’s also played at demonstrations for LGBTQIA+ and women’s rights, and in support of immigrants, the people of Gaza, housing, healthcare, and economic justice, workplace health and safety, world peace, and racial equity.

Stein currently brings his music to a weekly vigil at the Metropolitan Detention Center, where people arrested by ICE are being held. He also plays at a Saturday vigil sponsored by Sunset Park Neighbors for Justice and Peace who are demanding a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and the curtailment of ICE operations in and around Sunset Park.

“Music brings people together,” Stein says. “It raises the spirits of those protesting and makes them feel stronger. It even impacts people who are not participating in protests. Music gets their attention and may make it easier for them to hear what the demonstrators are saying.”

Stein retired from legal work 16 years ago, in 2010, and has never looked back. “It was always my intention to play music after I stopped working as an attorney,” he says. “Lawyering is adversarial. Music is collaborative, so it’s a nice change of pace.”

It’s also benefitted him personally. “I’ve met wonderful people thanks to music,” Stein says. “The accordion is found in more cultures of the world than the guitar and is popular in China, Japan, Eastern Europe, Italy, Central and South America, and among the Inuit people. Learning songs from these cultures has been incredibly enriching.”

What’s more, Stein says that his repertoire is constantly changing and he continually brings newly-learned Klezmer, international folk, and protest songs to events and actions. “I have the best ‘job’ in the world,” he says. “I bring uplifting music to communities and make people feel better about what they’re doing.”

Stein thanks his partner of more than 25 years, Elena Schwolsky, for her encouragement and inspiration.