What Are the Traditional Instruments in Latin American Music?

The Taíno lived in Puerto Rico before Spanish colonization. Their contribution Puerto Rican musical instruments is the güiro, a ridged, hollowed-out gourd scraped with a stick (a pua) to produce sound, and the maracas, made from putting pebbles in the dried shell of higuera fruit and attaching a handle. They come in pairs. Several kinds of instruments were developed from the classical guitars brought over by the Spanish: the guitarra, tiple, bordonúa, requinto and the bandurria. Most important is the cuatro, which has a baroque body and 10 strings arranged in five pairs. It can be considered the national instrument of Puerto Rico. Some percussion instruments like the conga and bongo were inspired by African examples, but were developed in the New World. Congas and bongos came by way of Cuba. Palitos are two sitcks banged together to keep the rhythm. There is dispute about whether Panderetas, which are similar to tambourines, only without the cymbals, descended from a Spanish instrument called the adufe or African instrument.

Cuban traditional instruments derived from African and Spanish sources. Percussion instruments are predominant. Many drums were developed, famously the bongos and the conga. A more recent addition are timbales, which developed from European timpanis. The Batá is a drum directly descended from Africa. The güiro is also used in Cuba, as are maracas, these originally made from gourds. The cabasa is a cylindar wrapped with steel balls that is rotated by way of an attached handle. A beaded net covering a gourd makes a shekere. Claves, like palitos, are sticks made for banging together. The cencerro is a cowbell played by striking it with a stick. The marímbula is an instrument derived from the African mbira. It's a wooden box with metal keys that are plucked. The six-stringed trés has as its ancestor the Spanish guitar, but is not only a string instrument--the trés is also used as a drum.

The most famous traditional music of Mexico is the Mariachi band, which uses violin, trumpet and a guitarra, vihuea and the guitarron. Traditional musical forms use other plucked string combinations, among the instruments are the jarana jarocha, the jarana huasteca, the harp, the bajo sexto and the leona. Brass instruments like the tuba and trombone are used in some forms. An octagonal tambourine special to Veracruz is the pandero octagonal.

Belize has several musical forms. One was developed by descendants of Caribs this heavily relies on drums for instrumentation. Other Belizean musical forms use the accordion, the banjo and the guitar, and for percussion, the dingaling--a bell--and the jawbone of an ass, which can be used as a rattle (with the teeth as the noisemakers) or with a stick scraped against the teeth. The marimba is also used, as it is in Guatemala and Nicaragua. Two traditional Panamanian instruments are a string instrument called a mejoranera is native to Panama, and a three-stringed violin called a rabel.

The traditional music of the Andes of South America is called Huayno. Panflutes, rattles and drums are indigenous to the region as is the charango, a type of stringed instrument like the guitar. The wind instruments were especially used prior to the arrival of the Spanish, who brought with them the guitar. African influence is, like elsewhere in Latin America, felt in some of the rhythms.