Percussion and percussion instruments: the checo and the angara in Afro-Peruvian music

You can use almost anything as a percussion instrument:  hands, feet, pots, pans, spoons, boxes, gourds....  Gourds!  Yes.  In Peru, there are several large gourds that Afro-Peruvians have used with great success as percussion instruments.  The ones I'm familiar with are the checo and the angara.

Both of these are really big gourds that look kind of like a doughnut without the doughnut hole.  Of the two, the angara is the largest.  Some are more than a foot and a half across.  A big checo is only about a foot across.

Here´s a video in which Lalo Izquierdo demonstrates a large variety of Afro-Peruvian percussion instruments, including the checo.  Not a word is spoken (or sung) in this video.  It´s just percussion.




You turn the checo and the angara into percussion instruments by cutting a hole in the sides, scraping out the seeds, and drying the gourd.  The hold in the side not only allows you to get at the seeds, but it also serves as a sound hole.

Both gourds make a wide range of sounds.  The checo has been used at least since the mid-1800s, and is enjoying a revival today due to a group in the northern Peruvian city of Zaña, a group associated with that city´s Afro-Peruvian Museum.

As for the angara, I have only seen it played in a couple of videos on YouTube.  Here´s one of them, dating from the 1950s, from a great program hosted by Dr. José Durand, broadcast by a television station that no longer exists.  If you don´t speak Spanish, wait for about a minute and the musical demonstration begins.




National Geographic´s on-line encyclopedia about musical instruments confuses the angara with the checo, and thinks they are one and the same.  They are not.  They come from different plants, and have a different sound.

At least two people in the current musical world are aware of the difference:  percussionist Hugo Alcázar and Chalana Vasquez, who wrote the article in Alcázar´s blog.  Good for them.

OUR NEXT POST will be about the kalimba, a musical instrument from West Africa, and the Ghanaian singer, "Sonny Kalimba."