Buenos Aires Recommendations?

[Bill N]

I will be in Buenos Aires for about a month this coming March and April with a generous amount of free time on my hands. Can anyone recommend concertina related happenings that I might take advantage of? I am a fairly experienced participant in Irish, English and Newfoundland sessions. I'd also be interested in hearing and learning more about bandonions.

 

Thanks!

 

[BertramLevy]

Oliverio Girondo club has good tango programs every saturday night and dance orchestras at MN several times a week. Cafe Vinilo also has good programs for tango.. Both are on facebook. There is an Irish step dance school in Palermo a section of Bs As. There are plenty of Irish bars but I dont know if there are sessions.

[Bill N]

Thanks Bertram. We will be staying in the Palermo neighbourhood. I'll definitely look these up.

[Gaspar]

I will be in Buenos Aires for about a month this coming March and April with a generous amount of free time on my hands. Can anyone recommend concertina related happenings that I might take advantage of? I am a fairly experienced participant in Irish, English and Newfoundland sessions. I'd also be interested in hearing and learning more about bandonions.

 

Thanks!

 

Hi Bill! I´m from Buenos Aires, Argentina. You will see a lot of tango and bandoneon here. There are many traditional irish folk groups here but sadly no concertina. I´m the only one playing duet concertina that I know. I can´t understand why no one plays concertina here. You can found people playing all kind of rare instruments here but never concertina.

[Stephen Selby]

Before you go, check this out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xh2ud5n1t9k

[Bill N]

Just got back from sunny, warm Argentina to my frigid home climes and can give a snapshot of the concertina scene in Buenos Aires. I did see some tango at a neighbourhood Milango and also made contact with what turned out to be a very active branch of Comhaltas, made up mostly of musicians and dancers in their 20s. They don't have a regularly scheduled session, but very kindly arranged a couple while I was there, and invited me to an Irish Set Dancing class (there was a power failure that knocked out their recorded music, so I ended up in-expertly playing for the dancers. Newfoundland tunes played for Irish dances taught in Castillano!) Also there are almost nightly performances by a number of the Comhaltas musicians at the Slante Pub on San Martin, and they invited me to sit in.

 

I tried to make contact with a bandoneon maker who has worked with Harry Guens, and apparently has a museum in San Telmo but with no success.

 

At first it appeared that Gaspar was correct in his post above- no concertina players- but when I got to the first session a number of fellow travellers came out of the closet. The group follow the ITM scene in Ireland very closely, and there is a great interest in concertina, but it's nearly impossible to find one in Argentina. Runaway inflation, exchange rates, high import tariffs and eroding wages give these young musicians very little buying power in the concertina market. They were all struggling with truly horrible Chinese boxes, but could do wonderful things with my Morse and Kensington.

 

I evangelized for c.net while I was there, so I expect there will be some new members signing up. Does anyone have any insights on how decent instruments might be made available in Argentina? Frank Edgley, this might be a market worth exploring by a Canadian maker (if you haven't already).

Edited April 12, 2017 by Bill N