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 A Puerto Rican cuatro strung for left-handed playing (with lower and thicker strings at the bottom of the picture.) | |
| String instrument | |
|---|---|
| Classification | String instrument |
| Hornbostel–Sachs classification | (Composite chordophone) |
| More articles or information | |
| Tiple (Puerto Rico), Bordonúa | |
The Puerto Rican cuatro (Spanish: cuatro puertorriqueño) is the national instrument of Puerto Rico. It belongs to the lute family of string instruments, and is guitar-like in function, but with a shape closer to that of the violin. The word cuatro means "four", which was the total number of strings of the earliest Puerto Rican instrument known by the cuatro name.[1]
The current cuatro has ten strings[1] in five courses, tuned, in fourths, from low to high B3 B2♦E4 E3♦A3 A3♦D4 D4♦G4 G4 (note that the bottom two pairs are in octaves, while the top three pairs are tuned in unison), and a scale length of 500-520 millimetres.[2]
The cuatro is the most familiar of the three instruments which make up the Puerto Rican jíbaro orchestra (the cuatro, the tiple and the bordonúa).[citation needed]
A cuatro player is called a cuatrista. This instrument has had its prominent performers like the legendary Ladislao Martínez Otero, known as "El Maestro Ladi", the great Nieves Quintero, the renowned Maso Rivera, Iluminado Dávila Medina, Yomo Toro and Edwin Colón Zayas.[citation needed]
- ^ a b LaBrucherie, Roger (1984). Images of Puerto Rico. El Centro, California, USA: Imágenes Press. p. 35.
- ^ "El Cuatro Puertorriqueno". String Instrument Database. Retrieved 23 December 2017.