Bordonúa relic photographed and measured by the Cuatro Project, currently stored in the archives of the Casa Roig museum in Humacao, Puerto Rico.                                                          Photo by William Cumpiano

Listen to the bordonúa stylings of Juan Sotomayor

A "jibaro orchestra" recreated in 2000 for the Smithsonian Institution, playing the Danza Aurora, with Juan Sotomayor on bordonúa, Yomi Matos on cuatro, Pucho Matos on tiple and Roberto Rivera on guiro
Cuatro Project co-founder Juan Sotomayor plays the bombardino part to the danza Sara
Juan Sotomayor makes up a seis inventao
An improvised potpourri on the bordonúa
Juan's own Chanson Grave on the bordonúa
Exotic afro-antillean stylings of bordonúa and drum
Bordonúa y Marimbola
A bombardino part to another danza

Played on the bordonúa melódica seen below on the right--a re-creation of the bordonúa seen above, made by Graciela Quiñones Rodriguez of Hartford Ct. Accompanying guiro and drum by Domingo deJesus; marimbola played by William Cumpiano

At the end of the 16th century Cervantes wrote that in Spain a large guitar was being played, one call a bajo de la uña. 150 years later a guitar appears in Spain that is 7 inches deep and 4 feet long, described as "a guitar with a deep voice." We believe these may be the original kinds of instruments that inspired the creation of the large native guitars that appeared around the Spanish colonies of our Hemisphere. Many of these are still actively used today, instruments such as the Argentinian, Chilean and Mexican guitarrones.
    The earliest reference we have found that establishes the existance of a large native guitar-like instrument appears in the book, El Gíbaro, written by Manuel Alonso and published in 1849. Alonso describes the bordonúa as a "guitar of large dimensions, made roughly, usually without any tools other than a knife or a small machete," which played the "deep voice" of the jíbaro string ensemble. In 1887, another observer, the chronicler Francisco del Valle Atiles noted that it had six thick strings.
    The shape, stringing and tuning of the bordonúa have changed over the last century, and the current way of making and playing it depends on who is rescuing it and what musical role it is being made to play.
     It's important not to mistake an instrument "with a deep voice" for a "bass" instrument. The bordonúa was never a "bass." That is it never was made large enough to produce the orchestral bass range, but rather, as it was described, it was a guitar "somewhat larger than the usual one, with a playing range that was low relative to the range of the cuatro and the tiple when it played, for example, the bombardino (a small tuba) part in countryside recreations of city Salon music. That is why it was sometimes called "the jibaro's guitar" because it was shaped like a guitar and it played a lower range in accompaniment with the cuatro. Indeed, during the twentieth century it largely disappeared from the Island musical scene, being replaced in string ensembles by the guitar.

Translator's note: links below will be updated as the articles are translated

Articles:
Notes on the tunings and stringings of the bordonúa

Notes on the sound of the bordonúa

A photo sequence of a modern bordonúa being built.

A bouquet of bordonúas!

	The Early Bordonúa No images or relics of the 19th century bordonúa have apparently survived --save for a glimpse of one hidden in the 1893 painting El Velorio by Francisco Oller. So the precise shape that it took is unknown. But we have made an artist's impression of the possible form that it may have taken from what is visible in the Oller painting and descriptions in contemporary chronicles ("a large guitar," with a "short neck").
	The "Melodic" Bordonúa  The old 6-string bordonúa disappears and in a limited region of the island the large instrument appears early in the XX century in a new role: adapted to carry eight thin wire strings mounted in five courses: two single and three double-string. Some were later updated to ten strings. The stringing and its tuning, A d f# b e' (low to high) voiced it more appropriate to play melody rather than accompaniment. Thus the Cuatro Project has named the "melodic bordonúa." In this form the bordonúa was heard from about the 1920s to 1950, played by such renown bordonuistas as Candelario Vásquez, "Don Candó," of Juncos y Eugenio "Yuyo" Velásquez of Aguas Buenas.
	The Bordonúa of Francisco López Cruz During the 1960s, the celebrated musician/folklorist Dr. Francisco López Cruz was tasked by the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture to rescue the bordonúa. Don Paquito chose not to return the instrument to its XIX century "voz grave" [deep voice] role, but chose instead to ask various prominent makers on the Island to produce bordonúas retaining the melodic range found on the earlier Vásquez /Velásquez bordonúas, but now using a stringing and scale similar to the modern ten string cuatro. This is the way the bordonúa is widely played today.
	The  bordonúas of don Cundi  The bordonúas of the late Secundino "don Cundi" Merced of Aguas Buenas, seen at left in the hands of the master builder Rafael Avilés Vázquez, are another form of the instrument with the tuning G c e a d' , in the same intervals as the Vazquez/ Velazquez bordonúas--and by the way, both in the same intervals as the Canary Island timple, interestingly. We have no further details on this instrument.
	Small Bordonúas There also apparently existed a small guitarlike instrument in some regions of the the Island also called "bordonúa". Around the 1980s we saw a very fine example in the hands of the the great Puerto Rican composer Héctor Campos Parsi, and later saw a similar one in the photograph at left, taken during a countryside celebration during the 1930s or 1940s. It shares the same form as the much larger bordonúa melódica (see above), with its bee-like shape, but much smaller.
	The "Deep" Bordonúa The Cuatro Project is promoting a return of the bordonúas nineteenth-century role as the lower voice in the Early Jíbaro Orchestra. To accomplish this, and at the same time to raise the instrument to modern standards, the "grave" bordonúa utilizes five string pairs that are heavier in gauge and tuned to E A d g c' (low to high) to allow it to perform in a deeper range that those of López Cruz, Vásquez/ Velásquez and Cundi/Aviles.