Mariano Godoy: The Man in Dialogue with the Bandoneon

​There are traditions that survive because someone preserves them. Others, because someone dares to reimagine them. Tango belongs to that second category. Each generation finds a different way to dialogue with a language that seems to have said it all and yet still holds unanswered questions. Mariano Godoy is perhaps one of those artists who decided to make questioning a method. For years he has been speaking to the bandoneon, but above all, for years he has been listening to it, as if knowing that the instrument still holds secrets. 

​Composer, singer, bandoneonist, educator, and inventor, Godoy built a body of work where Rioplatense tradition converses with electronics, rock, pop, and sound experimentation without sacrificing the emotional intensity that turned tango into a universal language. 

​During a car ride under the rain, a cassette of Astor Piazzolla shifted the course of his life forever. For years he tried to replicate on guitar what he heard on the bandoneon. “I started trying to imitate that sound. At 18 I gave up and switched instruments,” he recalled with a smile. Then came a confession that ended up defining his artistic identity: “I think I still play the bandoneon as if it were an electric guitar.” That decision transformed his way of understanding music: the bandoneon ceased to be a destination and became a starting point. 

​That is why his compositions never sound like a calculated fusion. The bandoneon arrived in a room where amplifiers, distortion pedals, synthesizers, and guitars were already coexisting. Instead of abandoning that universe, he decided to incorporate it, allowing tradition and avant-garde to coexist naturally. 

You can find the tickets here.

Dismantling the Sound

​That same curiosity led him to develop La Jaula, one of his most unique projects within Música de Cajas. Exhibited for the first time in Paris, the installation consisting of seven sound objects proposes modern music boxes where acoustic, visual, and electronic design intertwine with musical performance. It was one of his first approaches to experimentation: “I dismantled the bandoneon and recorded the breathing, the metals, the voices, the squeaks, and everything that happens in the background when we play. With all those sounds I made a piece,” he noted when presenting the experience. What for others would have been a technical detail, for Godoy became artistic material. 

​His relationship with the instrument does not end when he steps off the stage. For over a decade he has been developing training workshops, and in 2016, he created the Orquesta Escuela de Bandoneones, a project that brings together students of different ages and nationalities with a contemporary perspective where teaching coexists with improvisation and composition. 

​Democratizing Culture

​From that teaching experience emerged the Bandólica, an electronic instrument developed alongside producer Sebastián Barbui to bring the universe of the bandoneon closer to those who cannot access a traditional one. The idea was born after realizing that the price of an original instrument had become an insurmountable barrier for many young people. 

​He himself started learning on a cardboard keyboard with EVA foam keys to memorize note locations. Decades later, that improvised solution inspired a concrete technological development. To explain that need, he often uses an eloquent comparison: “If a soccer ball cost two thousand dollars, we probably would have never had a Maradona.” Democratizing access to an instrument also means expanding cultural possibilities. 

Charting the Path

Rather than treating tango as a museum piece, Godoy drives a living tradition. On the heels of his album NonTango—which reopened the debate surrounding the genre’s modern identity—the artist announced his new European tour, “TANGO O NONTANGO.” Between August and October, he will travel through Italy, France, Spain, Germany, and Sweden. The tour’s turning point will take place on October 9 at the Privat Club in Berlin, where he will celebrate the release of his first vinyl pressed in Germany—a milestone that marks the international consolidation of his work and weaves the new Argentine tango into the heart of the European music industry. His shows will combine instrumental pieces, original songs, and the use of the Bandólica, under a clear premise: “Tango doesn’t need guardians.”

Here and there, the quest remains the same. DJs have also begun picking his compositions, and today his music is played and danced to in the most prominent venues. Thus, between the local scene and stages around the world, Mariano Godoy’s music proves that traditions are not defended by freezing them in time but by letting them pulse in the present air.

As a prelude to his international tour, the musician will perform on July 22 at Artlab’s HiFi room, offering an immersive journey through his creative universe, where every note invites us to inhabit tango in a whole new way.