So simple, so complex

Note 005

Home > Blog A Musician's Log > Note 005

Some sonorous artifacts are very complex in their simplicity.

This is the case of a series of aerophones that belong to the family of flutes with external air duct.

Such a family includes wind instruments in which the air duct, the channel that carries the player's breath to the bevel where the air jet is "cut", is located outside the main body of the flute ― as opposed to those in which the air duct is included in the body of the instrument itself, such as the typical recorders, or the pinkillos of the Andes, or the Irish whistles.

That duct, whose presence and location defines an entire family, can be a metal tube, a segment of fine reed, the quill of a large feather, a piece of wood or clay, a section of plastic... The material is actually indifferent, as long as it leads the blow to the bevel.

And that bevel, which can vary from a small shallow recess to a deep and big notch, can be located on a multitude of body types ― with different shapes, dimensions, materials and mechanisms. The diversity is overwhelming. So are the sounds produced, and the repertoires performed with them.

Among the best known examples of flutes with an external air duct are the Colombian gaitas, and the indigenous instruments on which they were inspired: the "wax-headed flutes" and the "axe-flutes", which are still made and used from Mexico to western Venezuela.

But those instruments are extremely complex.

Simpler examples include globular whistles made by South American indigenous societies from seeds and fruit stones.

Such flutes are apparently found only among the Apinayé people of the Brazilian state of Tocantins, and the Canela people (an umbrella term for the Ramkokamekrá, Apanyekra and Kenkateyeen groups) of northeastern Brazil.

In general, they are composed by a small reed (the air duct) tied or glued with wax to a hollow or hollowed fruit stone (the body), which can be substituted, eventually, by a small gourd. The reed is covered in cotton thread, and it is inserted inside the body of the aerophone; in that point, a wax deflector can be placed, which serves to concentrate the air of the blow on the bevel. The body can serve as a simple resonator for a single note, or it can be provided with fingering holes to modulate the sound and obtain a certain (limited) number of notes.

The flute, moreover, can be single... or multiple. Of the two specimens belonging to this category, preserved in the museum of Göteborg (Sweden), and collected among the Apinayé by Curt Nimuendajú in 1931, one of them is double.

Returning to the idea of the beginning, some sonorous artifacts are very complex in their simplicity. A good part of them formed the basis of traditional music since the human species began to weave sounds. Unfortunately, simple things don't seem to attract attention anymore.

This post belongs to a compilation that has been published by El Zorro de Abajo Editora. That publication can be accessed thorugh the section "Articles" at Instrumentarium.

About the post

Text: Edgardo Civallero.

Publication date: 12.10.2023.

Picture: Apinayé instruments. In Musical and other sound artifacts of the South American Indians (Karl G. Izikowitz, 1925).