G-G-C-E-A-E

• OVERVIEW •

Mimics a common tuning of the charango: a small 10-string lute found in Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Chile, and elsewhere in the Andean region. A distant cousin of the guitar, the charango’s strings are paired into 5 ‘courses’ (like a 12-string) – and tuned to cluster within the span of a single octave (GG-CC-EE-AA-EE). This unusually narrow layout summons a strong resonance despite the instrument’s diminutive size, with further power added by vigorous, dense strumming techniques.

 

Bill Sethares notes that the charango’s strings “do not ascend uniformly from low to high…This makes for some very interesting fingerpicking patterns, since the bass…tends to be syncopated against the beat…the loose wrist of the style is reminiscent of [flamenco]”. While an exact charango-to-guitar tuning match is impossible, this one preserves the note order while also offering an ‘adjacent octave’ (6-5str) to replicate some of the ‘double-course’ timbre.

 

The four notes form a versatile C6 or Am7 voicing (like Hawaii’s C ‘Mauna Loa’) – although the double Gs and Es may offer more natural roots. Could possibly be seen as an abstruse variant of Banjo tuning: another re-entrant 5-string instrument invented in the Americas. (n.b. Sethares also devised his own charan-guitar tuning long before I came up with this one: he suggests removing the 6str entirely).

Pattern: 0>5>4>5>7

Harmony: C6 | 5-5-1-3-6-3

• TUNING TONES •

• SOUNDS •

The charango has a rich, politically-charged history. The basic construction, devised by Quechua and Aymara peoples some time in the 18th century, combines features of the vihuela (grandfather of the Spanish guitar) with design ideas from their own indigenous cultures – such as using an armadillo shell for the instrument’s body. Most have a mandolin-like scale length of around 37cm (=60% of a Strat), allowing for wide positional combinations impossible on larger fretboards (n.b. to mimic this on a normal-scale guitar, capo at 10fr).

 

As described by the Grinnell Collection, this tiny lute “has for centuries been a part of the musical lives of indigenous Andean peoples…traditionally used for courting and to accompany festival dancing. Since the 1920s, the charango has also come to be played by urban mestizo [Spanish-indigenous mixed-race] musicians”. They add that indigenous traditions preferred to “strum all the strings…so the melody is always heard against a harmonic drone“, whereas mestizo musicians “also developed [plucking] involving their right hand thumb & index finger, [so] a melody and harmony line are produced in mostly parallel motion”.

 

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• Bolivian Charango – unknown charanguista in Agustin Alonso’s La Paz workshop (2010):

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“Like many instruments in the New World, [charangos] combine characteristics of the Spanish guitar with indigenous adaptations…The smaller Andean version [was] used as a courting instrument played by men, [and] made its way over major colonial trade routes: size probably made it a handy companion.” (Ken Moore, MET Music Curator)

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In much of 1970-80s Chile, the instrument was de facto banned by Augusto Pinochet’s US-backed military regime as part of a wider ‘cultural blackout’. A 1992 LA Times feature (Chileans Make Music Their Battlefield) interviews members of the group Uraco on their experiences of this era: “The charango…represented a cultural era that officials wanted to leave in the past…a direct connection to a time when music and art flourished – before the military coup in 1973 that led to 16 years of brutal rule by death squads”.

 

Performing in public could risk severe consequences – as could any visible involvement in these undesired creative scenes. Over 2,000 people are known to have died or ‘disappeared’ at the hands of the regime, with countless more forced into exile. In the words of Miguel Ibarra, the group’s charanguista, “people involved in cultural activities were targeted: poets, musicians…Many were arrested, and many took asylum in foreign embassies while the military promoted their own culture of fantasy”.

 

Uraco’s live repertoire pointedly included songs penned by these exiled artists – and also the lyrics of Victor Jara, a prominent musician and playwright who was assassinated in 1973 (BBC: “Jara was…beaten and tortured in the bowels of the stadium. At one point, he defiantly sang Venceremos (‘We Will Win’) – [deposed socialist President] Allende’s 1970 election anthem – through split lips”). The band’s own director Nelson ‘Pirincho’ Vergara was also imprisoned and tortured – but, according to Ibarra, “We were really motivated to try harder…each person can make this world better, and music is our turf, our battlefield“.

 

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• Venceremos (with charangos) – Allende’s 1970 campaign:

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“I have faith in Chile and its destiny. Other men will overcome this dark and bitter moment…great avenues will again be opened…Long live the people! Long live the workers! These are my last words – and I am certain that my sacrifice will not be in vain.” (Salvador Allende, 1973)

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Today, a range of charango designs abound across the Andean region (also true of its tunings). Alternate names often derive from indigenous words for ‘armadillo’ (e.g. tatú, querú, cabasu, mataca, & toche: although cillador comes from an old Spanish term for ‘a high-pitched crying sound’).

 

For a selection of fantastic charanguistas from around South America, listen to Ernesto Cavour and Eddy Navia from Bolivia, Jaime Guardia and Federico Tarazona from Peru, and the late Bolivian-Argentinian legend Jaime Torres. Also check out the ronroco, a recent charango-guitar hybrid, strung heavier – plus Mariano Delledonne’s charango electrico.

 

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• Diablo Suelto – Jaime Torres (2012):

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“The charango [is] associated internationally with left-leaning, anti-imperialist political and social movements…protesting the Vietnam War, [and] U.S. interventions in Latin America…The contemporary connection [to] left-leaning trends, both in Latin America and Europe, is still implicit in the instrument’s image…” (from Heather Horak’s 2020 thesis The Global Charango, p.26)

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• NUMBERS •

	6str	5str	4str	3str	2str	1str
Note	G	G	C	E	A	E
Alteration	+3	-2	-2	-3	-2	0
Tension (%)	+41	-21	-21	-29	-21	0
Freq. (Hz)	98	98	131	165	220	330
Pattern (>)	0	5	4	5	7	–
Semitones	0	0	5	9	14	21
Intervals	5	5	1	3	6	3

• See my Tunings Megatable for further such nerdery: more numbers, intervallic relations, comparative methods, etc. And to any genuine vibratory scientists reading: please critique my DIY analysis!

• RELATED •

—Associated tunings: proximities of shape, concept, context, etc…

• Bağlama: another enchanting folk lute, distant oceans away
• C6 Mauna Loa: sailing the other way, arriving back at C6
• G Terz: an old charango cousin, countless times removed

• MORE INFO •

—Further learnings: sources, readings, lessons, other onward links…

• Charangan geopolitics: read more in Michelle Bigenho’s Intimate Distance: Andean Music in Japan (“the ‘charango controversy’: in 2006, the Chilean president…gave U2’s Bono a charango as part of a ceremony…The assumption that the charango is a Chilean instrument was then countered by [Bolivian] President Morales, who, at the inaugural ceremonies for the [next] Chilean president…gave Condoleeza Rice a charango”) – and also in Heather Horak’s 2020 thesis The Global Charango (“Andean music’s roots in indigenous and rural contexts is intrinsically interwoven with non-commercial community ritual and celebration…with inclusive and participatory values. Yet, ‘pan-Andean’ music was molded by its cosmopolitan agents’ political agendas, embedded in economic transactions [of] need and greed, and sold in ideological packaging to consumption-based audiences – even where the product was ‘rebellion’ to capitalism and imperialism…”)
• Pinochet’s neoliberals: Augusto Pinochet, who in 1973 overthrew Chile’s democratically elected Socialist President Salvador Allende, chose to hire American free-market economists to run his genocidal dictatorship’s economic policy – learn more about the troubled legacy of the so-called ‘Chicago boys’ in a Jacobin feature, Prof. Corey Robin’s overview – and sociologist André Gunder Frank‘s 1976 Economic Genocide in Chile: Open Letter to Milton Friedman & Arnold Harberger (“the state divests itself of state-sector enterprises at bargain-basement prices, to Chilean and particularly to foreign big capital…while repressing and exploiting the peasantry and rural labourers even more brutally than the urban population…there is repeated devaluation, tariffs and other import restrictions are relaxed, and every kind of favour is extended to foreign capital: including payments to the American copper companies…”)

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Header image: an ornate Bolivian charango (Villanueva)