Bandoneón: Argentina musical instrument

Bandoneón is a kind of musical instrument resembling accordion that is well known in Argentina, Uruguay and Lithuania. It is regarded as one of the most important musical instrument in most tango ensembles from the traditional orquesta tipicas of the 1910s onwards and also as a crucial instrument in folk music ensembles of Lithuania. As named by the German instrument dealer, Heinrich Band (1821-1860), the bandoneon was at first envisioned for religious music and the popular music of the day in marked difference to its predecessor, this German concertino believed to be a folk music instrument by some modern authors. The Italian workers brought this instrument with them to Argentina together with the German sailors in the late 19^th century. It was in Argentina that this musical instrument was incorporated into local music such as tango.

source of picture: www.casadelacultura.org.ar 

Like every other concertinas, the bandoneon can played by holding thr instrument between both hands and pushing in or pilling out the instrument while you press some buttons with your fingers. This musical instrument is judged to be part of the family of concertina of instruments instead of the accordion family even when the both are free reed musical instruments. The bandoneon unlike the piano accordion, does not keys like the piano, rather, it has buttons on both sides. And the sounds that are produced as it is being pulled and pushed are quite different. This means that each keyboard has two layouts. One used for the opening notes the other used for the closing notes. The left and right hand layout are quite different and as such it adds up to four different keyboard layouts that need to be learned in order to play the musical instrument efficiently. None of the keyboards layouts is defined to make the playing scale passages of the notes easy.

With the introduction of this musical instrument to the argentines in 1870, the bandoneon was taken up by those who wish to merge it into Milonga music of those days. Today we have tango music as the style that sprang out from the Milonga.