STRINGED INSTRUMENTS OF LATIN AMERICA by William Cumpiano Nowithsanding its great size and population, only a handful of different kinds of fretted instru ments have evolved in the United State members: the flattop steelstring guita Besre ted instruments of Cuba or even tiny Puctto Rico would be just as large. A list of Colombian or Venezuelan instru ments would be larger. Indeed, a list of difer: ne ly Mexican 1 Beal fretted instruments w criteria, a census of distinctive native freed instruments of Latin America could total as many as a hundred, Given THN artifucts, one could offer several reasons for this disparity: the cequilizing force of a more advanced mass media in the United States has increased the conformity of cultural tastes ts instruments; the greater dificulty of tr ye another, a factor which may have fost sh Protestants and Spanish ( ve their religions! Some or all of these may be the cause or peth ne. Be it as it may: a survey of the way fretwed struments spread actoss Latin America may suggest some of the reasons behind this astounding diversi A list of truly native or emblematic ones comprises just four the archtop jazz guitar, the electric guitar and the banjo. first alighted on the beaches of what today is the island of Santo Domingo (comprised of Hai and modern-day. inhabiean Americans as diverse as the Inui the Mayans Iroquois of Noah #/ Central America; the Yanomami and Inca descendants of South America: and the Carib and anos of the Caribbean. This great clash of eultares was typified not only by bloody and convulive struggles beeween religions and social systems, but also by the fusion of fir more humane and 2e of the heart and mind on J the to The ancient wi 1 cach shared the sau accompanying and inspiring the worship of their gods: cele brating the endings of bountifil harvests: marking. the important happs re dal‘ought of as “new” accomplished this all with the help of a variery of inst ments, most of which mimicked the sounds they heard in nature: inst ments that sounded like birds, rushing, water the rates of snakes, the groaning and knocking tagether of the all spindly bamboos swaying in the wind, cor the whistling sound of broken reed and grunting animals in the swamp. But many of the ancient inbabitants red by the wang of the stretched strings of of the Americas were abo char their hunting bows. They learned 10 modulate their bows’ pitch by flexing them and eventually to increase thei sonority by coupling chem to their cheek or ta dried, hollow gourds — the carliest sound boxes. Indeed, these ea. list of all stringed instruments sil sar vive in modern Bruzlian “and Paraguayan music in the form of the berimbaw and the gualamban, There are apocryphal tales of other Native American stringed instruments, (00, MONTHS BEFORE HE ARRIVED on that Caribbean beach, Columbus. disem: barked from a port belonging to a world that had been a province of the Moorish Caliphate for almost 2 thow sand years In fact, in the very year thae Columbus left the port of Cadiz in Southcen Spain, the Catholic monarchs Ferdinand and [sabells hel succecded in creating the Spanish nation afi uniting the ther ribes and casting fT the Moorish colonizers. But wh the Iberian tribes were composed large ly of crude and unsophisticated folk, the Islamic invaders that had ruled thei land for sixty generations brought to Spain the fruits of one of the greatest civilizations in the history of hy world the creators of nor only mathe ture, lierature, philosophy and music of their time—but also of the prec sors of both the plucked and bowed instruments that we use today The ancient Moots, themselves the Thus the hapless West Afiieans descendants of the ancient tribes of brought in chains to the Americas Persia (modern-day Iran) and far from being the ignorant, muttering Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq) were savages in loin closhs banging on jungle inhabitants of North Africa, Thus the drums chat we saw as kids in off Tarzan African continent, particulady the movies — hroughe with chem the cal. known by Columbus’ time great civis claborate expressions of rhythm, song, leavions, rich in music, art and civic and musical craft of their own civiliza structures, cultures deeply influenced tions. For centuries, West African music through trade and politics with the was created with the help of not only Moors skin and log drums, but ako a mul tude of phicked and picked str instruments derived from the ancient Islamic cultures: harp-like instruments and instruments much like our own iguitars, bur with seerched skin sound boards like the ngoniand buys ins icns the enslaved West African would develop later here as the banjo. Banjo like instruments would also appear across the Caribbean, Central and South Amevica as wel, each modified in distinctive ways by the unique eal: tural perspectives of the different peo- ples and places in which they appear. The Catholic kings decreed that the colonizers bad to spread the gospels to the native inhabicants, This was crucialtothe spread of stringed instruments all over the Lain American colonies. The tools the Spanish used 10 proseytize their creed were not only crucifixes and rosary beads, but stringed instruments as well, So it is certain and has been amply documente that significance numbers of Spanish string instruments were brought to the Spanish colonies from their beginnings. Priests biought them, as did Spanish sailors, soldiers, bureaucrats and Later, even setters from other Spanish colonies such as the Canary Islands Bor WHICH INSTRUMENTS came, and how specifically would they evalve in the “new” world? Spanish musicologists divide the instruments ince two major Families: instrumentos de pubo (wris” instru ments) and instrumentos de pus pick” instruments), that is the family of instruments played with the bare hand and the fam yf hone played witha pick or plectrum, At fi de dif ference seems miniscule, but in fae, it is quite significant, The paviarchs of these to fulies both derive from the ancient Moorish lute-like instruments the invaders brought ro Spain. They ate the viele de peiiola (mano-hands pefiola is an wo and sihuela de archaic corm for pick). Centuries later, the pulse family gavebirch to the Spanish gaitar of mod crn times, Characterstcally, mem ‘of this fumily had the familiar hourglass soundbox shape, a flat back and pre dominancly low-tersion strings made from animal guts Ia ancient Spain, a family of Moorish instruments with bow! shaped backs coexisted with these other guitar like inseruments, as they did in other pare: of Europe These went on co become the great Baroque and Renaissance luce of the Fificenuh and sixteenth centuries. By decree, the howl-hacked instruments were banned by the Spanish monarchs because they represented and reminded them of the invaders, Only che far backed insti ments were allowed co remain, Thus bowl-backed instruments have been viriualy nonesistent in the Spanish colonies of the Americas. One hint remnant of the ancient Moorish intlu ence, however, is preserved in the name of the Moorish lute: its name, The laud, a word which translates directly from the Moorish as "lute", was a name given to the many bowl-backed instruments ‘of Moorish descent (the term hud, oF the wood.” distinguished Moorish wooden-iop from skin-copped insta ments). The term sill remains for the Spanish Laual, which lost its bowl-back by decree and which evolved through the subsequent centuries. It is played all cover Spain to this day, and ics descen: ants in the New World are common throughour Cubs (almost without any perceptible change) and Puerto Rico (momphing into todays Puerto Rican From the caries cimes, members of the guitar Family evolved for playing muli-voiced (polyphonic) music as a solo instrument thar was either pumtea do, plucked with the bare fingers, oF jexlo, stummed with the hare hand, for accompanying a singer or 2 troupe. More often than not, instru rents ofthe guitar family have an open tuning that includes a dropped interval sich as the on the third string of our modern guitar. Chords are often exser to manage with when the strings ar In the 1500s the great Spanish band Cervantes, in a chronicle of daily life in his times, described sesing a great var ‘xy of guitars throughout the vill Spain: tiny ones le rips and guitar sills, somewhat lager ones known requintos full-sived.gudtarras and even larger sihuelas, and far larger ones called their place and voice in the éifferent groupings of their day. Some like the sihuela were reserved for the upper classes of Spanish society, while th sunalles tiples were most ofien seen in the hands ofthe lowes. The other family, no kss important in Spain than the first, comprises tis picked instruments (we can call them the baadurra family because the oldest all, picked bandurtia). Members of this family bad and most popular was thes their own characteristic shape and musical use, Although flat-backed like the guitars, they had a characteristic pear like soundhox outline or a modifi