The Charango

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I can see him. He stands proud, with his shoulders back; he’s short and stocky like a pitbull. His voice is just as proud as his posture, loud and deep, with a thick, warm, Andean accent. His wide jaw and square head make him look stern when his face is resting. But my dad is a performer, so his face is not often resting. Most of the time it is in a wide, amicable grin. He holds the neck of the charango in his left hand, and his right hand strokes it, smoothing down the hair, as though it were still living. His big hand covers almost its entire body. 

In my earliest memories my family had only one charango. It was the traditional kind, formed from the shell of an armadillo, the hair on the back still growing. When he introduced the instrument to someone new, my father always joked, When the hair gets too long I have to give the charango a haircut! The charango lived above the piano, right by the front door, hung by the neck so my father could easily play it. It was part of a sort-of mural my dad had created by hanging his instruments on the wall. I remember him arranging the quenas and zampoñas at pleasing angles, tracing them, and tapping little nails so they fit into the corners between the pipes of the zampoña, or precisely into the holes of the quenas. My dad tried to teach me to play the quena, but my fingers were too small to stop air from leaking out and I struggled to purse my lips precisely enough to direct air through the notch, so I stuck to the recorder. That wall, the piano with the mural of instruments above, served as a hearth for my family. During summer, hot air poured in through the screen door beside it—my parents stubbornly refused to turn on the AC—and my father took shirtless naps in his leather recliner. I remember the sweat made his dark skin glisten like smooth river stones and his soft snores sounded like the low rumbles of an incoming heat storm.

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