viola de cocho: Brazilian musical instrument

The viola de cocho is a singular plucked string musical instrument that originated from Brazil. It is characteristically in the state of Mato Grosso and Mato Grosso do Sul and has been produced to be part of Brazil’s intangible national heritage by IPHAN; the Brazilian institution that is responsible for the preservation of the countries national cultures and heritage. It is unusual in that even though it has 3 frets at most and it is left unvarnished. The Portuguese word cocho as mostly used by their local farmers, means to a hollowed-out log forming a kind of container. The cocho is greatly used to provide salt for cattle on grassland farms.

source: espiacuyaba.blogspot.com

The viola de cocho is a musical instrument of the short lutes family that is produced by master craftsmen. After selecting the wood, cut the trunk into two flat sections. The wood is scratch by casting, and the sounding board is carved out of the wood. The body of the instrument is also carved and the sound board is glued and then are posted the easel, mirrors also pegs and to fuse and the frets and strings will be placed on it.  Some of the instruments are carved with a hole on top and some are not. Any viola that has no hole is a new one. The players confirm the instrument with the hole is very hard to maintain; that is because the instrument that always come with this hole can have an animal like spider or ant in it that is damaging the instrument’s sound while some other players say that they prefer the instrument that has hole on it because the hole give the instrument a better sound.

With a special shape and sound, this musical instrument always has five arrangements of the strings and they are called “prima, contra, cordo do meio, canotio and the resposta” the strings are tuned in two varying ways which are the “solto” also known as the released and the “conotio preso” also known as the arrested.