Visit Bolivia with us: Music from Bolivia

Hello everyone! These days in Cochabamba have been spent reviewing Spanish Grammar, completing Bible Bee, reading this and that, getting ready to sell our grandmother's house, shopping, and learning to play a new instrument. This post's focus will be on this new instrument, as well as other unique Bolivian instruments. Let's begin!

There are countless instruments, like the piano, guitar, and drums, that are played all over the world. A few, less well-known instruments though, like the charango and zampoña, originated in South America, and are very common in Bolivia. We, that is, the Locklin kids, are learning how to play the charango. We have been driving downtown three times a week for lessons, and have enjoyed them!

The charango was first introduced after the Spanish conquest in Bolivia. It is a ukulele-like instrument made with either wood hull or an armadillo's carapace. The first two things I noticed were its five sets of two strings, and how its small body oddly contrasted with its huge headstock holding ten tuning pegs. When you play, the sound has a double-quality (due to each set of two strings sounding as the same note) that the guitar and ukulele lack. Its tone is absolutely beautiful!

My mom's 20-year-old charango

with which we practice.

Other well known instruments in Bolivia are the zampoña, quena, and bombo. The zampoña is a wind instrument that produces a breathy, mournfully beautiful sound. Essentially, it's a series of small pipes attached together vertically. The quena is a flute, with a smaller version of itself, the quenacho. The bombo is a circular drum made of hollow wood and and animal skin stretched out to shape its two faces. All these are the principle instruments played in Bolivia. For more information about South American instruments, you can go to www.guidebolivia.com/divers/folk/gb_instrument.htm.