the last French accordion manufacturer risks disappearing

The Maugein company has just been placed in liquidation and the very last accordion 100% made in France will be delivered on Monday to its last customer.

The Maugein factory, the oldest French manufacturer of accordions, founded in 1919 in Tulle in Corrèze by Jean Maugein, a piano tuner, until then a worker in a competing factory, was placed in compulsory liquidation by the commercial court of Brive (Corrèze) Friday September 27. However, it was a real success story since the Maugein company, renowned throughout the world, is known for having supplied groups and musicians as famous as Indochine, Renaud or Bourvil.

For several years the factory has been running out of steam. It saw its order books empty, victim of Chinese competition. And this despite its attempts to diversify by launching, for example, production of harmonicas and electronic accordions.

Some political leaders like François Hollande still want to believe it, suggesting that everything is not over, that buyers could ultimately save these 100% Made in France accordions, but it is unlikely that the company will survive in its current form, with its 10 employees, when there were 150 at the end of the 1930s.

Today, as the boss says René Lachèze: “We’re not going to keep people busy doing nothing. There are no more accordions to make, we no longer make accordions“. It’s always sad when a page closes, especially since the accordion, invented in Vienna in Austria, is an integral part of the French heritage imagination, to the point that many think it was born there. in reality the accordion is a polyphonic instrument, which has become multicultural, popular but learned, used both in popular balls and in traditional, classical or contemporary music. From Canadian ballads to Louisiana Creole music: from Tchaikovsky to Prokofiev, including. Richard Gilliano, Django Reinhardt or Cheb Khaled. As Yvette Horner says “you can play anything with the accordion“. So, we’re not going to stop dancing, are we?