The tarka ( Quechua, Aymara: tharqa) is an indigenous

flute The flute is a member of a family of musical instruments in the woodwind group. Like all woodwinds, flutes are aerophones, producing sound with a vibrating column of air. Flutes produce sound when the player's air flows across an opening. In th ...

of the

Andes The Andes ( ), Andes Mountains or Andean Mountain Range (; ) are the List of longest mountain chains on Earth, longest continental mountain range in the world, forming a continuous highland along the western edge of South America. The range ...

. Usually made of

wood Wood is a structural tissue/material found as xylem in the stems and roots of trees and other woody plants. It is an organic materiala natural composite of cellulosic fibers that are strong in tension and embedded in a matrix of lignin t ...

, it has 6 finger holes,

fipple The term fipple specifies a variety of end-blown flute that includes the flageolet, recorder, and tin whistle. The Hornbostel–Sachs system for classifying musical instruments places this group under the heading "Flutes with duct or duct flut ...

on mouth end and free hole on distant end. The tarka is a blockflute, like a recorder, but is comparatively shorter and quite angular in shape, requires greater breath, and has a darker, more penetrating sound. The tarka has three variants: big, medium (tuned by fifth above) and small (tuned by

octave In music, an octave (: eighth) or perfect octave (sometimes called the diapason) is an interval between two notes, one having twice the frequency of vibration of the other. The octave relationship is a natural phenomenon that has been referr ...

above). Usually all three kinds of tarka are used together in a big ensemble, all playing the same

melody A melody (), also tune, voice, or line, is a linear succession of musical tones that the listener perceives as a single entity. In its most literal sense, a melody is a combination of Pitch (music), pitch and rhythm, while more figurativel ...

on three voices at fixed intervals and accompanied by

percussion instruments A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Ex ...

('' tinya'', ''wankar''). This traditional genre is called ''tarqueada''.

References

Andean music Bolivian musical instruments Internal fipple flutes Peruvian musical instruments {{Flute-stub

See also

References