Young Slovenian sets accordion marathon record
Anže Krevh, a 22-year-old who has been playing the diatonic button accordion since age five has set an unofficial accordion marathon world record. He played non-stop for 53 hours, 53 minutes and 53 seconds this weekend, beating the previous record by more than two hours.
The previous world record was set by Christelle De Franceschi, a French musician, last year, but Krevh felt that "Slovenia is where the accordion is at home and we have to bring this world record back on Slovenian soil."
Helped by a 17-member team, the professional accordion player had a repertoire of roughly 250 songs since Guinness Book of World Records rules stipulate that an individual song must last at least two minutes and may not be repeated more often than every four hours.
"I'm psyched about what we've achieved, not just me but my entire team and all my supporters... It is phenomenal," he told public broadcaster TV Slovenija.
The team will now send all the documentation and evidence to the Guinness Book of World Records, only once they have checked and verified everything will he be formally declared a record holder.
The diatonic button accordion was invented by an Austrian of Armenian origin in Vienna the early 1800s and became a popular instrument throughout the Alpine countries.
It remains the bedrock of popular folk music known as narodnozabavna glasba in Slovenia, and its more modern iteration, turbo-folk.