The bandoneon? What’s a bandoneon?
Author: Rob Caldwell
Updated: 9:48 AM EDT April 30, 2021
PORTLAND, Maine — Over the years hundreds and hundreds of musicians have appeared on 207. Not until now, though, have we featured one who plays the bandoneon.
Invented in Germany with the idea that it would produce an organ-like sound for marching processions, the bandoneon looks and sounds like an accordion. It never caught on in Europe, but it did in Argentina. “We adopted it and since it has a very particular sound, we used it in tango,” says Hector Del Curto, an Argentine master of the bandoneon. “It became the sound of tango, the voice of tango.”