“Está Porteñosiendose” assure musicians when they explain the presence of a Californian saxophonist turned bandoneonist in their tango orquesta. The cultural oddity they are referring to is Ben Bogart, who alongside playing for the high-profile Orquesta Escuela de Tango Emilio Balcarce, gives bandonéon lessons to students based in the US or Europe over Skype.
It is an unusual, but surprisingly effective, method. Teacher and student position themselves in front of a webcam, bandonéon on their laps. Both open the music in a file and if necessary, a shared screen application enables Ben to highlight passages and point things out. There are of course some technical setbacks, aggravated by Argentina’s lamentable internet speeds, but overall it’s been a successful endeavour. “You learn to deal with it” shrugs Ben.
The longest running student so far has been learning the bandonéon this way for a year, and he has yet to meet any of them in person. Ben opines that “the biggest disadvantage is not being able to play at the same time.” On the upside, conducting classes online means that recordings can be sent as attachments for students to use as accompaniments either during the class or in solo practise sessions.
Ben has been playing the bandonéon for five years, for three of which he has been based in Buenos Aires. He explains that he initially got into tango through dancing, then djing, with “the logical next step” being to start actually playing the music. After finding tango tunes and saxophone sounds to be unhappy bedfellows, he set his sights on learning the bandonéon. It’s fair to say he hasn’t looked back since.
Although bandonéon lessons are something of a niche market, Ben believes there to be a growing interest in tango in the United States and Europe. He testifies to a strong international community of musicians who feed off one another for ideas. Perhaps somewhat blasphemously, Ben even goes so far as to insinuate that tango’s social dance scene is better outside Argentina because it is less banalised by the tourist industry.
Maybe the reality is that tango has extended its tendrils sufficiently far over the international musical community to have grown independent of its Buenos Aires’ origins. It would seem the truism that history repeats itself holds, and Ben suggests that just as tango’s turn of the century popularity in Paris led to its reappropriation in Buenos Aires, many Argentines continue to develop their musical skills “because of a European demand for it.”
Despite his sanguinity, much of the Argentine tango community believe the death knell to be sounding for an instrument once known as “the soul of the tango”. With every passing year, fewer and fewer bandonéons are made and played in Buenos Aires. In response, the Casa de la Bandoneon recently proposed the creation of a law which would enshrine the instrument as part of the cultural patrimony of Argentina. The aim is to create a registry of bandonéons which would prohibit them from permanantly leaving the country.
Supporters of the proposal view the instrument as a key facet of Argentine identity. Just like so many porteños, the origins of the modern day bandonéon are rooted abroad, in the German concertina. Although the accordion is an obvious guess for a relative, the bandonéon is in fact a member of the completely separate concertina family. Where the piano accordion makes use of piano keys,small pearlescent buttons on the side of the bandonéon are pushed for chords and melody. They share categorisation, however, as free reed instruments because both produce sound as air generated by a bellows flows past a vibrating reed in a frame.
Playing the bandonéon is a serious commitment in terms of time, money and effort. The keys on the instrument do not correspond to the scale in any logical way and must be memorised by heart. A new bandonéon will set you back €5000, although the preference is for similarly priced second hand instruments as Ben explains : “they stopped making good ones after 1940”. Even the physical effort required seems relatively intense although I am informed that this should be more blamed on a technique unhoned than the instrument’s chunky construction.
It takes a full sixty minutes to discover why Ben describes the bandonéon as “really captivating”, or to understand what might draw a proficient jazz musician to it other than a willful pursuit of the obscure. The sheer bulk of the instrument is daunting, sheet music is impossible to read regardless of your musical background and training your fingers to dart unseen from chord to chord is a frustrating process. But there’s a compelling satisfaction to be earned when by the end of the lesson, issuing from what may at first strike as a bastardised accordion, is a slow, stilted and simplified – yet totally recognisable – version of La Cumparsita, tango’s most iconic melody.
Skype bandoneon classes with Ben Bogart can be arranged by consulting www.benbogart.com
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[…] The structure and etiquette of the dance varies little. Generally, it is divided into musical sets known as tandas. The invitation to dance comes from the man, who will nod towards the woman he wishes to dance with. She signals her acceptance of the offer with an equally subtle gesture and only then will he approach her table. The tango that follows is a passionate dance of improvisation, an intuitive bonding set to violins and bandoneons. […]