harmonium

My experience is that Harmonium is very common as an accompanying/supporting instrument - probably precisely for the reasons you specified.

The harmonium is their favorite instrument.

It is interesting to juxtapose the feelings of Indian classical musicians towards two Western instruments: the harmonium and the violin.

When a pianist tries to play an organ, harmonium or an on/off electric keyboard without dynamics for the first time then he/she is often thrown completely, the result is often horrible.

They still use the same 12 notes that correspond to keys on a harmonium.

The harmonium still exists in Indian classical music today, but it is significantly more popular in Hindustani music than in Carnatic music.

I could understand if you’re talking about the harmonica, but a harmonium seems odd for either context.

I built a browser-based Indian harmonium that preserves Rajaraman Iyer’s original laptop keyboard map and adds a continuous piano-style layout.

The harmonium story is a metaphor for an invasion of Western instruments (mostly during the early 20th century) that couldn't reproduce local music traditions.

When for the first time a pianist tries to play an organ, harmonium or an electric keyboard that has little or different dynamic feedback then he/she is often thrown completely, the result is often horrible.

They are fairly big compared to your typical harmonium.

It is for precisely this reason that the harmonium and similar keyed instruments like the piano are eschewed in Indian classical music (barring a handful of exceptions).

In response, Paul Smolensky made the “Harmonium”—which was the first restricted Boltzmann machine.

It was rather yet another colonial endeavour: "In 1940, the harmonium was banned from All-India Radio, theretofore the largest single employer of harmoniumists in India.

[...] In 1938 Foulds published an article called “The Harmonium” in which he suggested that it be banned because its tuning was incompatible with Indian classical music.

My understanding is that the Harmonium (Smolensky) was the first restricted Boltzmann machine, but maximized “harmony” instead of minimizing “energy.” When Smolensky, Hinton and Rummelhart collaborated, they instead called it “goodness of fit.” The harmonium paper [1] is a really nice read.

In John Adams' Harmonium, I was surprised to learn the basses go into treble clef for a second.

Wallace Stevens' excellent book of poems, Harmonium, is also now free on Wikisource [0].

I believe Paul Smolensky has some priority with the Harmonium, but Hinton certainly deserves it.