Musician finds inspiration through Inca tribe

Oscar Rios Pohirieth told Barr Middle School sixth-graders that he found his passion at age 10.

That's when his father brought home a "quena," a flute created by the Inca tribes who lived in the South American Andes.

Although fascinated by the instrument, Pohirieth said, it took him a month before he was able to figure out how to get a sound from the quena.

But his love for the instrument persisted and Pohirieth noted that when a person has a passionate interest in anything, they sometimes can learn much about it within only a few days time.

But Pohirieth, who is now 38, added that it takes a lifetime to perfect playing any instrument and that is how he is spending his life.

And Pohirieth is not just working to perfect his talents on the quena. He also plays numerous other instruments invented by the Incas. They include several forms of zampoñas, or pan flutes. He also plays other kinds of flutes, the drums and even a "baby guitar."

Incas made their zampoñas from reeds that grow around the perimeters of Lake Titicaca, the highest navigable lake in the world, Pohirieth told the sixth-graders, who were celebrating "Travel Around the World Day" on Friday.

The Lincoln-based musician and educator first played on a medium-sized pan flute called a sanka. At one point during his performance, Pohirieth was playing the sanka with one hand and a drum called the bombo with the other.

He next retrieved a much smaller pan flute called a chuli, which was smaller than the palm of Pohirieth's hand.

He told the sixth-graders that very young Inca children learned how to play pan flutes by first playing the chuli, the only zampoña with a single row of pipes. All other zampoñas have a double row of pipes.

 Pohirieth didn't play a song with a melody on the chuli. Instead he blew into it to show the sounds a young child might make on the instrument.

"It's kind of annoying," said Pohirieth, who noted the instrument nevertheless taught children how to play the more sophisticated zampoñas.

The comment that Inca parents once about "annoying" sounds probably have echoes from today's parents as they hear their children first begin to play band or orchestra instruments.

Pohirieth next played music on a large pan flute called a malta and then graduated to the largest pan flute of all, called a toyo. The toyo stretched almost the length of his Pohirieth's body and its size drew a collective "whoa" from the sixth-graders.

He told the students that each time the pan flute gets larger, it requires much more breath to play.

Although Pohirieth was a solo performer on the toyo, he said the customary practice is for the double row of pipes to be split apart so two people can play them. He noted careful communication is needed between the musicians as they effectively play half of the same instrument.

Pohirieth's next pan flute was called the rondador, which has a single set of pipes. This time, the musician did not play solo. He chose one Barr sixth-grader to accompany him on the chajchas, which are llama and goat hooves tied onto strings to create a percussion instrument.

Other Barr sixth-graders joined in by clapping their hands three times in time with the chajchas.

One of the last Inca instruments used by Pohirieth was the charango, which he described as a "baby guitar" that looks a bit like a spoon. He said the Incas were impressed when they first saw the guitars used by Spaniards.

But as inspired as they were, the Incas also realized they did not have the materials to replicate the Spaniards' large guitars, Pohirieth said. The Incas lived in the high plains of the Andes, an arid region that can still receive snow when it gets cold enough. That an portion of the earth that does not have much wood for making guitars.

The Incas solved their problem by using the shell of armadillos, which gave the small guitar its spoon-like shape. The charango's strings were made from pig guts, said Pohirieth, who showed students a charango made with an armadillo shell.

This particular charango had no strings, though, which meant it had no pig guts. For his performance, Pohirieth used a more modern charango made from wood and traditional modern strings.

Once again, students in the audience accompanied the music by clapping their hands or stamping their feet three times when Pohirieth gave the command "con las manos" for "with the hands" or "con los tacos" for "with the feet."

Other audience participation included selecting students from the audience to play a drum originated not with the Incas, but with  the Omaha Nation of Nebraska.

The music that Pohirieth played on his charango, though, still had its roots in Inca music and Spanish lyrics. The Mexican-born musician noted he liked to see people from many different backgrounds sitting in a circle and playing the drum, whose invention was inspired by the "heart beat of the human being."

Pohirieth's morning concert, sponsored by the Nebraska Humanities Council, was succeeded by an afternoon session when sixth-graders met with people who are immigrants to this country or who have lived part of their lives in another country.