Charango

     While eating dinner at a bar in Chaiten Chile called “El Quijote” a friend of my father’s came in and sat down. His name was Nicolas and he had with him a cloth bag with what looked like a tiny guitar inside. With very little prompting Nicolas pulled the tiny instrument out and told me that it was called a Charango. It was too dark to get a picture for myself, but here is what they look like (for scale, the entire instrument is shorter than my arm).

     The Charango is actually Bolivian, but is played all over South America. My PhD adviser grew up in Bolivia so naturally I told him about this and he replied “You know those things are made from armadillos, right?”. Though Nicolas’ Charango was wood, the Charango was indeed originally made from armadillos.

     Anyway, Nicolas started playing his charango for us and fortunately I had my MP3 player with me (not an iPod!) and was able to grab a (low quality) recording. The first two tracks are some random songs he probably made up, but the third is a traditional Bolivian charango song. If you listen very carefully (Nicolas is very soft-spoken) he introduces the song before playing. The charango is a 10-stringed instrument with five pitches all in the same octave and tuned to a minor chord. The effect is a tiny instrument that puts out a rich wall of sound totally unlike anything I’ve ever heard.