Latin American small four-string guitar family Cuatro

The cuatro is a family of Latin American string instruments played in Puerto Rico, Venezuela and other Latin American countries. It is derived from the Spanish guitar. Although some have viola-like shapes, most cuatros resemble a small to mid-sized classical guitar. In Puerto Rico and Venezuela, the cuatro is an ensemble instrument for secular and religious music, and is played at parties and traditional gatherings.

Cuatro means four in Spanish; the instrument's 15th century predecessors were the Spanish vihuela and the Portuguese cavaquinho, the latter having four strings like the cuatro.

Modern cuatros come in a variety of sizes and shapes, and number of strings. Cuatros can either have single-strings, like a guitar, or double- or triple-coursed strings like a mandolin, and vary in size from a large mandolin or small guitar, to the size of a full-size guitar. Depending on their particular stringing, cuatros are part of the guitar or mandolin subfamilies of the lute family.

The word cuatro first appears in 1828, when an activity that included stringed instruments was mentioned in a Puerto Rican newspaper. The word cuatro was used to represent the number of strings that the instrument initially had, but a 10 stringed, 5 course cuatro was made in 1887, as shown in a photograph taken in 1916. By 1922, cuatro music was being played on Puerto Rican radio stations, like "Los Jíbaros de la Radio" (1932) and "Industrias Nativas" (1934).

After many years of constant rise in popularity, the Puerto Rican government approved a law in 2002 declaring that every year on November 17, the Commonwealth would celebrate "El día del Cuatro y del Cuatrista Puertorriqueño" (Day of the Cuatro and Puerto Rican Cuatro Player). Only a year later, the Puerto Rican cuatro was one of three instruments that were declared the National Instruments of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and important symbols of Puerto Rican culture.

Several sizes of the instrument exist, including a cuatro soprano, cuatro alto, cuatro tradicional (the standard instrument, also called cuatro tenor), and cuatro bajo (bass): All have 10 strings and are tuned in fourths. There is also a cuatro lírico (lyrical cuatro), which is about the size of the tenor, but has a deep jellybean-shaped body; a cuatro sonero, which has 15 strings in 5 courses of 3 strings each; and a seis, which is a cuatro tradicional with an added two-string course (usually a lower course), giving it a total of 12 strings in 6 courses.

The Puerto Rican Cuatro is played with a pick, and the cuatrista will strike downwards on the string with the pick in order to generate the sound that the person wants to produce. The most popular technique used to play the cuatro is called tremolo, which occurs when a cuatro player continually strikes the same chord multiple times to generate a sound for a longer period of time. The tremolo is used to play longer lasting notes, like whole notes, half notes, and tied eighth notes and sixteenth notes.

The cuatro of Venezuela has four single nylon strings, tuned A3–D4–F♯4–B3 . It is similar in shape and tuning to the ukulele, but their character and playing technique are different. It is tuned in a similar fashion to the ukulele's traditional D tuning, but the B is an octave lower. Consequently, the same fingering can be used to shape the chords, but it produces a different inversion of each chord.

There are variations on this instrument, having 5 strings or 6 strings.Certain variants are considered the national instrument of some countries (e.g., Venezuela). The cuatro is widely used in ensembles in Jamaica, Mexico, and Suriname to accompany singing and dancing. In Trinidad and Tobago it accompanies Parang singers. In Saint Lucia the cuatro is used as an accompanying instrument in traditional Sewenal music at Christmas time.

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