HOHNER Accordions & Their Impact on Culture & Music Worldwide

Watch the interview above or read on for the narrative version...

“HOHNER has survived recessions, wars, depressions, pandemics. They survived. I think what kept us afloat is the harmonicas … Accordions were a different story,” Gilbert Reyes said, thoughtfully, during our Zoom video interview. The wall behind him was lined with various diatonic HOHNER accordions in colors ranging from gold to white, to a sleek matte-black model. Off to one side stood a gold diatonic accordion displayed with a photo that could have been Flaco Jiménez—one of the best-known conjunto players in the United States. The visuals offer a hint of Reyes’ extensive involvement with HOHNER and the accordion world. A third-generation diatonic player and product manager for HOHNER, Reyes has been a major advocate for the accordion, especially in Latino circles. He went on to talk about the state of the instrument when he first began with HOHNER. “When I came on board in 2008, accordions were on life support. I thought that, in a few years, HOHNER was not going to be relevant in the accordion world at all, period. We didn't have new products, we weren't reaching out to the communities and we weren't doing anything innovative. I came in and nobody knew anything about accordions.”

To see how far HOHNER has come and the impact of the business, we have to go back in time to the beginning of the story—one that didn't start with accordion. It’s a story that Reyes wove for me with his soft-spoken passion for the accordion and its history. Let’s go back over a hundred years to 1857 and meet Matthias Hohner, the founder of what is now HOHNER Music. At the time, Matthias Hohner was a clockmaker in Trossingen, Germany. One day, as the story goes, Hohner saw someone making harmonicas. It intrigued him, so he started making and producing harmonicas too. “He didn't realize that he was going to change the music industry forever,” Reyes said with a smile. Eventually Hohner started selling his harmonicas to emigrant families who were leaving their home countries and moving to the United States. That trend turned into a distribution channel as families loaded their possessions, along with the harmonicas, and then sold the small instruments in America. It wasn’t planned, but it worked, and the company started growing little by little. In 1901, HOHNER opened its first offices in New York. The United States took the lead and became its number one distributor of harmonicas. They went from minimal harmonica sales to millions. By 1907 they had sold around two million harmonicas.Two million? I was amazed. Reyes continued, “It wasn’t just selling. It was innovation.” It was the middle of the industrial revolution. HOHNER started working with new ideas on how to manufacture, new ways of making the harmonica reeds and mass production. What Henry Ford did with the manufacture of cars, HOHNER was doing with harmonicas. On top of that, the company grew because they established new distribution channels worldwide. They sent representatives throughout the United States, Brazil, Argentina and Mexico—all over the world. These representatives didn’t just sell harmonicas, they learned about the music of the individual places they visited and brought the harmonicas into their cultures. These distribution channels, along with the methodology, laid the foundation for HOHNER’s future success.

"These distribution channels, along with the methodology, laid the foundation for HOHNER’s future success."

I was curious. Since HOHNER had started as a family business, did that also contribute to its success and longevity? Reyes affirmed, “I think that has a lot to do with it.” The Hohner family was very conservative, and Matthias Hohner raised five sons under this philosophy. When he passed away in 1900, all five sons, together, assumed the family business. Matthias, himself, hadn’t wanted to pursue accordions, but the sons did and decided to explore accordion manufacturing. As far as they were concerned, they already had the manufacturing capability and distribution channels. By 1903 they had started their first accordion factories. At the time, they only produced diatonic accordions and not piano accordions. I was surprised at this. Reyes lit up as he explained, “If you look at a 10-row, 10-hole harmonica, it’s diatonic. What does that mean? That when you blow on the harmonica it’s one note, and you inhale, it’s another note. The diatonic accordion is the same concept. The one-row accordion is basically a harmonica. But instead of using your mouth, you use your hands with the bellows.” This made sense. From there, HOHNER started developing the two-row and three-row diatonic accordions.

“So, when HOHNER started the distribution channel in Mexico, is that what made the diatonic accordion so strong in their culture?” I asked. Reyes hesitated a moment before telling me it was more complex than that. “There’s this huge debate right now between the musicians of Mexico and the musicians of the U.S.,” he told me. “The musicians from the U.S. say the diatonic accordion in regional Mexico originated out of the U.S. Tex-Mex. Our friends from the other side of the border say it originated from Mexico. There's no recorded history to where the starting point actually was.” Reyes went on to explain that the accordion had been coming into the Americas long before HOHNER started manufacturing. There were small, independent factories that would send them with the French and Italian emigrants. They didn’t have huge, established distribution channels like HOHNER’s, but by the late 1800s accordions were manufactured and sold all over the world. It wasn’t mass production, just a few at a time. “What's interesting is that accordion became part of the culture of Mexican music,” Reyes continued. “But it was more for the working class. It was the poor, working class who embraced this instrument.” Even when he was growing up as a third-generation diatonic player in South Texas, Reyes said the diatonic accordion was associated with agriculture, the uneducated and those without many resources. It was poor man’s music, so it wasn’t that widely distributed. That isn’t the case today, and diatonic accordion has become much more popular in Latino communities and culture. Reyes went on to say something that struck a chord with me, “You have to also consider that there's no border between the U.S. and Mexico, because the music flows freely back and forth. You can't put walls or borders between the music and the culture. It just flows back and forth.” Indeed. Music has no walls or borders and crosses all language barriers. It's one of the reasons to love it!

"You can't put walls or borders between the music and the culture. It just flows back and forth."

Since the diatonic accordion had been manufactured first, I wanted to know when the piano accordion entered the picture. Reyes had the answers and told me, “By the 1920s, the piano accordion started coming into the picture, and it accelerated through the 1930s, the 1940s and the 1950s. Piano accordion sales became second to harmonica sales worldwide.” He said that part of the reason for the success was that schools worldwide, not just in the U.S., were developing literature and music to teach how to play the piano accordion. They felt that if you played the piano, it would be easy to learn the piano accordion as well. It became part of the school system. “If you look at the U.S., for example, by the 1950s, piano accordions were all over the place. High schools had programs. There were independent programs and major stores all over the country, even mom-and-pop shops were selling piano accordions or giving lessons,” Reyes told me. It became part of the mainstream music scene.

It was true. Even in my area of Spokane, Washington (USA), there had been about 20 accordion studios during the peak of the accordion’s popularity. Now there is just one—mine—Bartell Music Academy. I had thought the decline was mostly in the U.S., but Reyes let me know otherwise. “Worldwide, the decline is not only happening here, but it's happening in Europe,” he said. and went on to tell me about a visit he made to Germany. He was on his way to visit the HOHNER factory. During the hour-long trip from Stuttgart to Trossingen, the young man who was driving him asked what he was doing in Germany. When he found out that Reyes worked for HOHNER, a manufacturer of harmonicas and accordions, he was surprised and said, “Wow! Really? People still play accordions?” This was a young, local man who had grown up in Germany. Reyes said it was just one person, but that it conveyed a lot, because he hadn’t been exposed to accordion at all. “I think there's starting to be a shift in it, though. I'm not saying that it's all doom and gloom,” Reyes assured me. He went on to note that they are starting to see more young people interested in the accordion. In Nashville he is seeing some young artists starting to play accordion in famous country and Americana bands. “And it's like there's a trend happening. We don't know what it's going to look like, but it's going to be exciting within the next five to ten years to see what's going to happen.”

This brought us full circle back to HOHNER and what it is doing today to bring the accordion back into U.S. culture and worldwide. Reyes said, when he started with HOHNER in 2008, “I took it upon myself to try to revive the accordion market in the U.S. We've been successful. But there's still more to do. We’ve found a formula, but now we want to expand it even more towards the piano accordion world, which I'm doing these next few years. We've been very successful with the diatonic accordion.” In the last 10 years, Reyes and HOHNER have done a lot of new innovation with the HOHNER accordion lines. While many of the accordions are made in Germany, they located a factory in Italy for their premium Anacleto line. The Anacleto accordion introduced new designs and new colors to the market. It was very successful. This opened the door for more exploration, and they decided to make a high-end piano accordion in Italy as well. The Matteo was born. This paved a new road for collaborations between the Germany and Italian factories. It’s not only the high-end models that HOHNER focused on … it’s also created entry-level and mid-range accordions as well, so that there’s truly something for everyone. That is one thing I, personally, have appreciated about HOHNER. HOHNER listens to its audience and works to meet their needs. There also is an emphasis on community and giving back. As Reyes said in closing, “For me it's always been about the community. So how do we give back to the community? I mean, it's not just, ‘Here, buy our products.’ We have to give back. That's why we try to help different schools. We try to donate certain products to children who don't have money to buy these accordions. That's very important to me, and I think that's one of the reasons we're successful--because it's not just about the money. It's about, How do we help our people, our community, the children? That is key.”