I've been enjoying all the small luthier shops around this area... this afternoon / evening we were walking through the San Blas area, and found another one.
Marimacho - a 16 stringed instrument with 4 courses
This luthier has all sorts of instruments, but the one which impressed me the most is a 16 string variant of the Bandurria with 4 courses (4 strings in each course) which the luthier calls the "Marimacho", seen above.
Apparently this variant is native to the Cusco area. This particular one is tuned the same as I tune my 6 string baritone ukulele (DGBE) so I could just pick it up and play it. The sound is very rich, with lots of overtones.
16 strings in 4 courses
Here's a Youtube video that I found showing the Marimacho in use - I am not sure if this is the same luthier or not (I didn't catch his name - given my lack of Spanish and his lack of English all communication was via Monica), but it does look like him, and the building style seems similar.
Some other instruments he has in his shop include some charangos, mandolins, guitars, a harp, etc.
A finished Charango
Terran holding an unfinished Charango
It was pretty cool to see a charango in progress - it is carved out of a single chunk of wood:
Well, it is almost December. Now you are probably thinking about Christmas, because it is only 26 days away today. To me it seems closer and at the same time further because it is 3 houses away. Close, but far. We went to see The Crimes Of Grindelwald in Spanish. It was really cool. I would not recommend going to that theatre in Cusco, it was small and stuffy. Also it was a mall. Chinook centre kind of. Not so big! I would suggest just turning on Spanish subtitles in you own home. If you know me, you know how much I love Harry Potter movies and books, so of course I am going to end up getting myself the play script when it doesn't cost $81.51 so I can see what happened because I didn't really understand very much in the Spanish movie... 😭 It costs SO much! We went to some Catacombs yesterday. We were not able to take any pictures of the bones, but it was really cool. We saw he...
Since arriving in Cuenca we have been catching up on school work, and getting settled so we have only explored a little in the afternoon. but so far from what we have seen, Cuenca is a beautiful city. Ever since we started thinking about this trip Cuenca was in our radar, we have read that it is a safe, and beautiful city, and from the little bit of exploring we have done the rumors are true. View of one of the domes of the New Cathedral of Cuenca
I wanted to write a little about some of the people we have met here in Cusco. As I have mentioned before we are lucky to find fast friends in our local church congregation. We still have one more Sunday here in Cusco and thought we would take the opportunity then to say good bye to our friends and take pictures too. Well, at the end of our church meeting we found out that next week church is cancelled all over Peru due to elections. Apparently a lot of shops, and churches do not meet since people have to travel back to vote in their designated areas, and no one goes to church anyway, thus we were not able to get pictures of all the many people that have shown us kindness here in Cusco, but here are a few: Maija met two really nice girls at church, we could not find Aby, but here is Maija with her friend Flor. They kept asking Maija how to say things in English
These are cool! You took notes? ;)
ReplyDeleteSo neat! Can’t wait to see Wyatt make one! Björn is drooling over here!
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