Charanga Flute Style

"Since the XIX century the concert music, military bands and the dancing salon music was executed with a wooden flute with 5 or 6 keys. The Böehm system for flutes appears more lately.

With the appearing of the "Charanga a la Francesca", the wooden flute of 5 keys or most well known as "wooden flute", (in the argot of the flautists of the dance orchestra) caught up a great acceptance among the performers of this wind instrument due to her specify sonorous color, the ample zone of records, the extension of scale and force of intensity of the sound most of all in the half way superior tones pitched half a step higher."

These qualities motivate his very frequently utilization for the execution of the fundamental rhythms that the "charangas" plays: country dances, danzones, boleros and son in a first stage. Later the flautist’s interpreters were gloating with the mambo, cha-cha-cha and other Cuban popular dance music. There is an ample repertory of plays and historic periods that confirmed the inestimable presence of this instrument in the orchestras".

Text courtesy by José  Loyola Fernández. Director Charanga de Oro.