On our journey we listened to the flute, bassoon, clarinet, violin, viola, cello, upright bass, charango, pan pipes, trumpets, drums, and the beautiful voice of Francy Vidal.
The performance was brilliant and the conductor was delightful! He was playful, ran around the stage acting out his music, let the audience clap and dance in the aisles. During the performance, we learned about lots of different instruments, including:
The CHARANGA, little brother of the Spanish guitar, which is traditionally made out of the back-shell of an armadillo:
Four different trumpets, two that were made out of cow horns, segmented and bound together with cow hide:
One trumpet made out of a shell that is most commonly known as a CONCH.
And the last was a 10-foot long trumpet traditionally used on farms where it is played on a hill into a valley to send messages to workers. The sound echoes against the surrounding mountains or hills and becomes so loud that it stretches across the field, and every worker knows at the same when to stop working or come in for lunch.
The last type of instrument we encountered was Pan Pipes. We had never seen such a diverse collection of pipes before. They are the quintessential community instrument, made with two rows of pipes so that they can be split and shared between two friends. The trio played pan pipes that were 4-feet long; these are known as “grandma” pan pipes and are known for making “the sound of the Earth breathing.” We also saw smaller pan pipes that were traditionally made out of the feathers of condors. Since condors are now endangered animals, the Trio had ones with feathers from a different large bird. These made the sound of the bird themselves, such a high-pitched sweet tune.
This concert taught us all much about the evolution of music and instruments; we learned that you can make music out of just about anything, and that music from around the world is delightful.
