Cavaquinho

Overview

The cavaquinho is a small four-string plucked lute of the European guitar family, originally Portuguese, with a body about half the size of a standard guitar and a high-pitched tonal range. Wikidata describes it as a small plucked string instrument of the European guitar family and gives the country of origin as Portugal; DBpedia adds the Hornbostel-Sachs description composite chordophone.

The instrument has three main regional traditions today: the Portuguese cavaquinho of the Minho region of northern Portugal, the Brazilian cavaquinho (the international standard, anchored in samba and choro), and the closely related Hawaiian ukulele, which descends directly from the Madeiran Portuguese cavaquinho carried to Honolulu by emigrant workers in 1879.

Origin & History

The cavaquinho originated in northern Portugal, with the strongest documentary record in the Minho region (the historical heartland of Portuguese folk music). The instrument is documented from at least the 18th century in Portuguese sources, though its origins are probably earlier and connect to the wider 16th- and 17th-century Iberian tradition of small four- and five-course lutes.

Portuguese emigration in the 19th century carried the instrument across the Atlantic. It reached Brazil during the first decades of the 1800s and was rapidly absorbed into the developing Afro-Brazilian urban music of Rio de Janeiro and Salvador. By the 1870s the cavaquinho was a standard member of the choro ensemble (alongside the seven-string guitar, the flute, and the pandeiro), and by the early 20th century it had become the rhythmic core of the emerging samba style.

In August 1879 a contingent of Madeiran Portuguese contract workers disembarked at Honolulu in Hawaii from the British ship Ravenscrag. Among them were the cabinet-makers Manuel Nunes, José do Espírito Santo, and Augusto Dias, who set up workshops in Honolulu producing small Portuguese-style instruments — the Madeiran machete and rajão, both close cousins of the cavaquinho. The Hawaiian local population took up the instrument under the name ukulele, and within twenty years the ukulele had become the central plucked-string instrument of Hawaiian music. The 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco brought the ukulele to mass-American attention, and the rest is the well-known popular-music history of the instrument.

The MET catalogue does not hold a dedicated cavaquinho but does include closely related Iberian lutes (the small lutes 503385 and 503930 in the wider European guitar family). Portuguese specialist makers (Manuel Cardoso, Antonio Pinto Carvalho) and Brazilian makers (Vergueiro, Roberto Costa) supply the international cavaquinho market today.

Construction & Materials

A standard cavaquinho is about 52 cm long with a body about 22 cm wide. The flat back, sides, and neck are typically rosewood or mahogany; the soundboard is spruce or cedar. Four steel strings (in the Brazilian tradition) or four nylon strings (in the Portuguese tradition) run from the bridge to four tuning machines on a slotted or solid headstock. Twelve to seventeen frets give a working range of about two octaves.

Standard tunings vary by tradition. The Brazilian cavaquinho is most commonly tuned D-G-B-D (low to high, sometimes called sol tuning). The Portuguese cavaquinho is most commonly tuned D-G-B-D as well, with regional variants D-A-B-E, A-A-D-G, and others. The Hawaiian ukulele uses a different tuning (re-entrant G-C-E-A) and has a different repertoire focus; the standard Madeiran machete tuning that the 1879 emigrants brought is closer to the modern Portuguese tuning than to the Hawaiian one.

How It’s Played

The Brazilian cavaquinho is played with a plectrum (a thin plastic or tortoiseshell pick), held between the right thumb and forefinger. The basic right-hand technique combines downward strokes (toque), upward strokes, and rapid alternating strokes (malagueña-style strumming) to produce the characteristic samba and choro rhythmic patterns. The left hand fingers chords across the standard four-string range.

In choro the cavaquinho fills two roles. As an acompanhamento instrument it supplies the harmonic-and-rhythmic background to the melody line carried by flute, mandolin, or seven-string guitar. As a solista (less common) it carries the melodic line itself, often in elaborate improvised variations. In samba the cavaquinho’s role is more strictly rhythmic, supplying the harmonic content of the standard partido alto and batucada patterns at the centre of the bateria (samba percussion ensemble).

The Portuguese cavaquinho is more often played fingerstyle than with a pick, and its repertoire focus is on regional folk dances (vira, malhão, chula) rather than on the urban samba and choro styles.

Cultural Significance

In Brazil the cavaquinho is one of the central popular-music instruments of the 20th and 21st centuries. Choro — the urban-popular music style developed in Rio de Janeiro from the late 19th century onward — has the cavaquinho as one of its three or four canonical instruments (alongside the seven-string guitar, the flute, the mandolin, and the pandeiro). Samba — both the older samba de roda of Bahia and the urban samba carioca of Rio — uses the cavaquinho as the harmonic-and-rhythmic anchor of the bateria. Modern pagode (the popular-samba style of the 1980s onward) gives the cavaquinho a particularly prominent foreground role.

In Portugal the cavaquinho remains the standard regional folk-string instrument of the Minho region, and is also used in the fado and Portuguese-popular-music traditions in supporting roles.

In Hawaii the ukulele descendant has become the world’s most-played small plucked-string instrument, with international youth-music adoption since 2000 driven by performers including Jake Shimabukuro and Israel Kamakawiwoʻole.

Notable Examples & Recordings

• Waldir Azevedo, Brasileirinho (1949) — the most-recorded cavaquinho choro in history.
• Henrique Cazes, Choro do Brasil and the wider Cazes catalogue — modern Brazilian choro reference.
• Jacob do Bandolim’s recordings (cavaquinho frequent collaborator) — mid-20th-century choro reference.
• Mário Rocha, modern Portuguese cavaquinho reference recordings.
• Israel Kamakawiwoʻole, Facing Future (1993, ukulele reference) — the descendant instrument.
• Jake Shimabukuro, Live at McCabe’s Guitar Shop (2003, ukulele) — modern virtuoso reference.

Related Instruments

• Ukulele — the Hawaiian descendant.
• Cuatro (Venezuelan) — the Venezuelan four-string cousin.
• Tiple — the Colombian and Puerto Rican relative.
• Mandolin — the Italian-derived four-course-double-string relative used in choro.
• Bandolim — the Brazilian mandolin, choro front-line partner.
• Guitar — the larger plucked-lute relative.
• Cigar box guitar — folk-craft small lute in the same physical-size range.

Where to Hear It

In Brazil: every choro roda, every samba bateria, every pagode show in Rio, São Paulo, Salvador, Recife, and across the country. In Portugal: the regional Minho festivals (Festas de São João in Porto, festivals in Braga and Viana do Castelo). Internationally: every choro club worldwide (London, Paris, New York, Tokyo all have active choro communities); recording labels include Acari Records (Brazil), Tradisom (Portugal), and Smithsonian Folkways.

• Wikipedia: Cavaquinho
• Wikidata: Cavaquinho (Q1051805)
• DBpedia: Cavaquinho
• Wikimedia Commons: Cavaquinhos

Learning Resources

A starter Brazilian cavaquinho costs 100 to 250 USD; a quality Brazilian instrument from a recognised maker (Vergueiro, Roberto Costa, Solid) costs 400 to 1,500 USD; a top Portuguese cavaquinho from Manuel Cardoso or similar runs 600 to 2,000 USD. Pedagogy: Henrique Cazes’s Cavaquinho Sem Mestre (the standard Brazilian self-teaching method), Mauricio Carrilho’s choro-acompanhamento materials, the Escola Portátil de Música (Rio de Janeiro) online courses, and the long-running Roda de Choro tradition of in-person learning by playing with experienced players.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the cavaquinho a small guitar?
Physically yes — it is in the same European plucked-lute family. Musically it has its own identity, particularly in Brazilian choro and samba, where it functions as a rhythmic-harmonic instrument rather than as a melodic lead.

Is the cavaquinho the same as a ukulele?
The ukulele descends directly from the Madeiran Portuguese cavaquinho (specifically the machete variant) brought to Hawaii in 1879. The two instruments share the same basic four-string design but use different tunings, different repertoires, and have developed separately for over 140 years.

How is the Brazilian cavaquinho tuned?
Most commonly D-G-B-D (low to high), known in Brazilian usage as sol tuning. Other tunings exist but are less common.

What is the difference between a cavaquinho and a cavaco?
Cavaco is the common informal Brazilian name for the cavaquinho. The two terms refer to the same instrument.

Can a guitarist play the cavaquinho?
The basic technique transfers, but the chord shapes are different (because of the different tuning and the smaller fingerboard) and the right-hand rhythmic vocabulary is specific to the Brazilian samba and choro traditions. A guitarist should expect a few months of focused practice to play the instrument idiomatically.