Avelino Flores – El Chamamécero

I met bandoneon player Avelino Flores at his home in Corrientes in December 1993. Avelino Flores is considered a successor of the famous Chamamé bandoneon player and composer Tránsito Cocomarola.

Avelino was born on February 2, 1935 in the north of the province of Santa Fe, where the influence of the Guarani Indians is very present. 

Many European immigrants had settled in this province and produced cotton, oil and other agricultural products. They were also very fond of the folklore of northeastern Argentina, the chamame and the rasguido doble, and above all the style of the wonderful Tránsito Cocomarola.

Avelino Flores first plays the guitar. At the age of 17, he begins to learn the bandoneon. He soon plays in the Los Angeles orchestra before founding his own ensemble and developing a style of his own. In 1959, at the age of 24 he was invited by the famous Vera-Lucero duo to play with them, a collaboration that would last for many, many years.

Avelino Flores becomes famous with songs like La Topada and Montecito, in which he develops the chamamamé without ever abandoning the roots of the music of the Argentine Northeast. With the poet Isidro Luciano Prado he wrote the wonderful “Homenaje a las Islas Malvinas”.

In 1960 he moved to Corrientes and started a family. His sons Rudi, on guitar and Nini, on accordion, play with their father since adolescence and continue to develop the folk music of their land. The three of them also perform in Europe and conquer the public with their great musicality and their virtuoso interaction.

In our conversation, Avelino Flores tells me about the influence of the Gurani Indians in the music of Northeastern Argentina and how the Chámame developed from the Paraguayan Polka. He tells me how he learned to play the ba ndoneon – first as an autodidact listening to records and radio recordings. And why he reveres so much his great Idolo Tránsito Cocomarola.

Listen to yourselves all what Avelino Flores, this outstanding Chamamecero, who passed away in August 2018 at the age of 83.