Zambrino! A previously unreleased collection of circus and fairground tunes for accordion and hurdy gurdy, recorded between 2002 and 2026.

In 2002 I was already 30 and doing cabaret in London, when my family saw fit to reveal I was directly descended from the celebrated Victorian contortionist Percy Delevine (great grandfather). I would have appreciated the knowledge a bit sooner frankly—especially during the years where I was pleading to join the circus—but not to worry. I immediately adopted the name for my act. I added to it the Circus name my father habitually called me—Ricardo—put up a sign, and went into the family business. I was accompanied among others by Louis Barfe with his “Suitcase O’Drums” – which we found at a bootfair in Kessingland. At one point we had accordion, clarinet and trombone, piano doing the bass – plus the suitcase.

My very first squeezebox had been a Chinese paper concertina that I begged my mum to get me from British Home Stores, when I was about three. I smashed that up fairly quickly. They shouldn’t really make children’s toys out of paper, it’s rude. There were a few of these, as I recall, interspersed with tears.

The next was a toy piano accordion, which could carry a proper tune and on which I composed strange Balkan-sounding epics without knowing where they came from. By the time the tunes on this collection were written, I had been playing an old second-hand 48-bass accordion for about 10 years. “Trois Petites Notes de Musique” is played on that one. It was punishingly heavy but the reeds were soft and you could fudge the couplers, a bit like riding the clutch of a car, to get an illegal “swing” sound, which it was not designed to produce. I’ve never seen that on a box since. Ruined me for musette.

I used the first real money I ever made from one of my book advances to buy a new white pearl Luciano 60-bass, and a wooden Castagnari D/G diatonic and have a hurdy gurdy built for me by the master luthier Chris Allen. Which used up the money pretty quickly. Perhaps it was the revelation about my showman ancestor but I became fascinated around this time by the music of old fairgrounds and circuses – barrel organs and such. I went to visit funfairs whenever I could and I was especially taken with the sound of smaller portable street organs—”orgues de barbarie”. I began trying to replicate the same feel on my acoustic instruments.

This was long before anyone had figured how to distribute music digitally, so I did not see myself as a recording artist at that time. I was a cabaret performer first, and used the recording process to put together pieces I could take to the stage. Some of the recordings turned out really well, and others less so.

After I moved to Paris I was advised by a record label there to ditch the Delevine moniker and use my administrative Josser name, as it sounded more exotic to French ears. This is ironic and did not help my Google rankings one bit.

Recently I’ve been joining the dots of my family history, along with my own extensive but unsystematised digital archives. I’ve moved around so much there’s so many unfinished ideas and projects lurking on old disks, many of which have been forgotten. On one such Sunday I found what was essentially an unreleased album from 25 years ago. Cracking tunes, all of which seem to hark to the circus and the fairground. Imagine my surprise when, researching my family tree, I find out these had also been part of the family business all along.

Maşallah!

The collection includes two pieces I wrote as audiovisual scores. Clémentine was the theme for a radio series I wrote and produced for Oneword, back in 2005. I recorded it in Rungis, Paris. I didn’t have my Luciano with me at the time so it’s all on the diatonic.

La Boite à Trésors was commissioned as the score for an animated film short by Anna Odell and Andrew Hague. I recorded it in Abbesses, where I was living at the time. Coco et les Eléphants was originally written to perform with the late great Bob Flag at Krisis Kabaret in Kings Cross, but ended up living its best life in the caves of Paris, with Jimmy Virani on theremin. The original recording had some issues, so I took the opportunity to re-record it for this compilation and Virani kindly reprised his unique touch.

A few of these tunes never got names because they were never published, which means I’ve been able to name some retrospectively. One such is “Riossio’s wager”, a screamer with a Balkan feel. When I hear it I imagine jugglers on unicycles. In 1895, Percy Delevine (an accomplished trick cyclist himself the family says, although he made his name as a contortionist) put a notice in a national paper, The Era, announcing the birth of my grandfather, “a fine boy”. The notice ends, “lost your bet Riossio”. I’ve often wondered who Riossio was. In my head it’s a singing magician with a slim moustache who smells of pomade.

The collection includes a version of Copshawholme Fair, that actually sounds like a fair. There’s a monumental swagger to the ending of this that feels like a manifesto, partly due to the terrifying long “chien” buzzes on the hurdy gurdy. Full-body chills. The portability of the squeezebox and the gurdy meant they could be played on the stoop of your wagon as you advanced on the fairground site. I can’t help but imagine this scene when I listen back. I had tried to copy the right-hand technique from the hypnotic vielleuse Anne-Lise Foy, who I had just met in a chapiteau at Jenzat the year before. It was recorded in my tiny flat in Abbesses. I’m genuinely surprised the neighbours never complained.

Muller Mush is the only new tune. Unsurprisingly it came out of the same recording session as Coco et les Eléphants. Once I was on that tip I wanted to keep it going a bit and so this song just kind of popped out. I had to stop myself writing a new album. Like Coco, it features the blinding trumpet of New York’s finest, Matt Giella.

The cover features the manège at Les Halles in Paris, taken with a pinhole camera on a rainy day walk with Leïla Morouche—always my favourite waltz partner. So many memories. Maybe I will write that new album …

Big bises, Ricardo 

RELEASE DATE: Friday Nov 14, 2026