Here’s your illustrated Guatemalan Spanish word of the day: Chinchines for maracas as they are widely known. Let’s begin the new year with some rhythm and color. Let’s shake son chinchines to the rhythm of the new year.
To play this game you simply try to name as many musical instruments as you can from the musical stand above (you might need to click on the photo to get a larger version for details). Let the game begin.
The sonajas or maracas take on a different name in Guatemala, they are called chinchines; an onomatopoeia (onomatopeya in Spanish). Generally, Guatemalan chinchines are found painted black with incisions made to expose the natural color with patterns similar to what you may find in textiles, but more recently chinchines can be found of all colors. … Read more
In the photo above you can observe several percussion traditional Guatemalan musical instruments like chinchines (the black rattles made from gourds, seeds and other objects), tortuga (turtle shell), shellfish shell, drum, sonajas (rattles) and the omnipresent marimba (which you saw yesterday). Guatemala has a rich assortment of traditional musical instruments which are used in the … Read more