Their Musical Instruments

Before the arrival of the Europeans to the Americas in the fifteenth century, Andean culture had evolved for thousands of years. Therefore, it is not surprising to find that there already existed a large number of musical instruments that had followed their own evolutionary path with the passage of time.

After the Spanish conquest, Andean man assimilated and incorporated in his music and lifestyle instruments brought by the foreigners, using them as a starting point to develop new instruments and new ways

to play them, thereby enriching Andean musical culture. WAYANAY INKA uses typical Andean instruments. A brief description of each is given below. The category of wind instruments includes mainly instruments of the siku (zampoña) and quena families, but also contains the antara, rondador and ocarina.

String instruments include the charango, hualaycho, charanguita and ronroco. Percussion instruments include the bombo, wankara, chajchas, palo de lluvia and tinya.

The quena is a vertical flute, tubular in shape, open at both ends, with a U-shaped mouthpiece that is placed at the tip of the lower lip when blowing air to produce sound. It has six finger-holes in front and one in the back. Quenas are available in a variety of sizes, according to purpose and to local customs. Not surprisingly, different groups of Andean natives use their own tuning for this instrument, which may vary in shape, size and even in name, from place to place. The modern standard professional quena is tuned to G major.

Quenas vary in size. The quenacho is a larger quena.

The siku has two separate rows of pipes open at one end and closed at the other, with each row containing every other note of the musical scale. Usually, there is a row of six pipes, called the ira, and one of seven, known as the arca. The pipes are held in place by two or more straps, also made of cane, running across the width of the instrument, and by threads or cloth braided between the pipes and attached to the straps. Present-day sikus are made from highland bamboo and from chuqui, a cane found in the outskirts of many Peruvian forests. In Bolivia, a cane called zongo is also used. In ancient times, sikus were also made of clay or stone.

Depending on size, sikus are known by different names, which may vary from place to place. Intermediate in size, the most popular siku is the malta (about 11.5 inches long). The chuli, or chili, is an octave higher and about 5.5 inches in length. The sanka or basto (about 23 inches) is twice the size of the malta and an octave lower. Further down the tonal scale, we find the toyo (about 46.5 inches), twice the size of the sanka and an octave lower still.

A sikuri is a siku player (un tañedor de siku in everyday Spanish). Traditionally, sikuris are ensembles (known to have reached some 100 persons in number) of siku players who collectively interpret a melody while dancing to it, almost always accompanied by one or more bombos to keep time. The execution is carried out in the form of musical dialogues, each performed by a pair of which each member plays one of the two rows of the same siku.

From times immemorial, Andean man has used the siku to express his character, feelings, sentiments and emotions. His happiness, grief, pride and feats as a warrior have found their deepest expression thus. Since long before the Inkas, the siku has been an instrument both ritual and magical through which the many Andean cultures have expressed their deepest spiritual tradition.

The antara is made from a single row of cylindrical pipes arranged by size to give the instrument an essentially triangular shape. In the National Museum of Anthropological Archaeology in Lima, there are dozens of Nazca antaras retrieved from burial and other archaeological sites dating to the Nazca period. The number of pipes in each of these instruments varies from three to fourteen.

Antaras found in Inka burial sites are mainly pentatonic and are made of cane fastened by multicolored threads of cotton or wool. These instruments vary substantially from their Nazca counterparts, not only in the method of construction, but also in their musical quality.

In truth, the original Nazca antara is a musical enigma: Thanks to it diatonic and chromatic scales, it offers major musical possibilities than those of the Inka instruments that appeared subsequently.

This instrument is the most typical and representative of the Andean people of Ecuador and parts of Northen Perú. San Juanito is the most well known rhythm associated with this instrument.

Today, the rondador is available in a variety of tunings. For its construction, the thinnest bamboo canes are selected to produce instruments with a soft sound. At the time of the Inkas, feathers from the wing of the condor were also used to give such instruments a magical aura and a ritualistic character.

The ocarina is a globular flute, with or without a mouthpiece (to channel air inflow), such that sound is extremely easy to produce. In the Andean world, this instrument can be found in many varieties and with a multitude of decorations. Some have eight finger-holes in the upper part (four for the fingers of each hand) and two in the lower part (one for each thumb).

The European ocarina (known as the sweet potato) was developed in the nineteenth century in Italy and Austria. It became quite popular in many countries, including the United States. Its invention is attributed to Giuseppe Donati, around 1860.

Probably, one of the ocarina ancestors is the pututu (quipa in Ecuador), a traditional instrument among Peruvian Natives, particularly those near Cusco (Cuzco). The pututu is a large seashell, about eight inches in length, with a hole of around four tenths of an inch drilled at the pointed end. The pututero (pututu player) places his lips there and by blowing air, with some strength, produces a highly vibrating and penetrating sound. The pututu, also made of fired clay-like mud, is used to convene cabildos (town meetings), to announce reminders of important days, and to signal situations of emergency.

The origin of the rainstick is a mystery. According to legend, its sound has the spiritual power to serenade the rain gods. Indeed, some maintain that the Diaguita People of the Elqui Valley in Northen Chile use the rainstick to this day in ceremonies to invoke the rain spirits. In modern society, the rainstick, in addition to being widely used as a musical instrument, is also used by persons of all ages as a toy or as a tool for relaxation.