trikiti

thumb|Trikiti being played thumb|right|Performance featuring a trikiti with tambourine accompaniment The trikiti (standard Basque, pronounced ), trikitixa (dialectal Basque, pronounced ), or eskusoinu txiki ("little hand-sound", pronounced )) is a two-row Basque diatonic button accordion with right-hand rows keyed a fifth apart and twelve unisonoric bass buttons. The onomatopoeia trikitixa, apparently stemming from the sound emitted by the tambourine, originally referred to a traditional Basque ensemble, made up of the instrument which now bears the name as well as alboka, txistu and other instruments.

Probably introduced by Italian immigrants coming from the Alps, the trikitixa's first written evidence is attested late in the 19th century, exactly in 1889, when diatonic accordion was used for music in a popular pilgrimage festivity of Urkiola (Biscay). In 1890, a trikiti appears in a picture taken in Altsasu (Navarre), a railway junction. Therefore, some point to the instrument's import to the Basque Country from Italy through the port of Bilbao, while other sources suggest that this kind of diatonic accordion was brought in by Italian railway workers from the Alps. The diatonic button accordion itself was devised in Vienna in 1829, expanding thereafter all over Europe.