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In the 1840s , Heinrich Band was a music teacher and music seller in Krefeld , a German town . In 1843 he opened a shop there . He did not build the instruments himself . He bought them from makers in Saxony and Bohemia and sold them to his customers . One of them was a square instrument with many buttons , a close relative of the German concertina . People often say it was meant for church music , in places with no organ , but this is not certain . It was first sold as an " accordion " . The name bandonion came around 1855 , probably from " Band Union " . Band sold the instrument and it carries his name , but he may not have been its only inventor . How the instrument crossed the Atlantic is not documented . The usual account says that around 1870 German sailors and emigrants brought it to Argentina and Uruguay . Nobody can say who carried the first one . There it found a second home . Tango grew up among the urban poor of Buenos Aires and Montevideo , and the bandoneon became its main instrument . Its deep , breathing sound still marks the music today . In 2009 , UNESCO listed tango as cultural heritage of Argentina and Uruguay together . A small instrument sold in a German shop now carries one of the world 's best - known dances across the sea . Its story shows how a product of one town can become the voice of two other cities . 
