Bolivia Has the EMP Beat

Today I paid a visit to the Museo de Instrumentos Musicales. While there is plenty of Bolivian guacarock, reggeton, ranchera, cumbia, nueva canción and etc., Bolivia has retained an incredibly rich folk music tradition with all sorts of instruments of their own invention.

We saw lots of charangoes, tiny guitars adapted from Spanish lutes and mandolins. However, charangoes are traditionally constructed out of armadillo shells. There are a few explanations for the unconventional soundbox selection. Some people say that Andean musicians liked the sounds of the Spanish instruments, but could not bend wood into the appropriate shapes and had to use armadillo shells. Others say that the Spanish prohibited Andean music, and that the charango was created because it was easily hidden. We also saw tortoise shell and more conventional carved wood charangoes. Charangoes usually have ten strings, requiring incredibly nimble and slender fingers. They appear and are tuned a little like an ukulele, but is played more like a banjo, and sounds completely different than either. All the strings are tuned inside a single octave, so it creates very full and sustained sound.

We also saw zampoñas, the panpipes so often associated with Andean music. They’re usually made from bamboo tubes of varying lengths. Some zampoñas are taller than the tiny musicians who play them! Pieces of dried corn, or pebbles, are placed in the bottom of the pipes to precision tune them. The pipes are split into two rows, called the ira and the arka, which symbolize the male and female, and together form a full scale. Traditionally, two people play the zampoñas together, but today one musician is more common.

Finally, there were plenty of quenas. Quenas are bamboo flutes played by pinching the top of the tube with your lower lip, and blowing downwards, as I imagine a beaver would. Pinquillo, tarkas, and moseños are similar variants. Other distinctively Andean instruments include the pututu, a ram’s horn, chajchas, a shaker made of goat, llama or sheep toes, and every imaginable size and shape of drum and rattle.

The museum also had a huge collection of non-Bolivian instruments. My favorite was this Peruvian ocarina. Then there were also homemade instruments, including a guitar made out of a spam can, and an exhibit explaining the tin can telephone. Finally, there were some instruments that I can only imagine came from a Dr. Seuss book.

The EMP has absolutely nothing on this museum. They had way more instruments, cooler instruments, tons of stuff to touch and play with. The EMP's only advantage is its amazingly ugly building. Not to be outdone, the Museo had blueprints of charago shaped edifice on display. If only Paul Allen had an interest in armadillo guitar shaped buildings.