The castanets

History
The backgrounds of the castanets come from the prehistory. Since the dance is based in rhythm and is one of the more primitive artistic ways of expression, we can conjecture that the castanets were one of the first musical instruments created by the human. It is possible to find the primitive castanets in all the continents, like a testimony of the loosen civilizations or in a more elaborated version, like it happens in Spain.

The oldest precedent of the castanets can be placed in the Paleolithic, and it was found in Ukraine. It is a sort of wristlets made in ivory, which makes a harmonious sound when they are clattered. Later, we can find a testimony of the use of this kind of instruments in the Egyptian, Chinese, Carthaginian or Greek civilizations

However, in spite of this civilizations influence in later cultures, the real origin of the Spanish castanets is probably the Iberian "crusmata" (the Iberian was an antique culture, placed where Spain is). It is composed of two wooden pieces, two shells or two stones, which dancers and musicians played laying them held of their fingers, into the palm of the hand. Unlike the other sorts of castanets, the Iberian crusmata had the two pieces joined by a cord put through holes.

Spanish castanets are the only that have been evolved through the time, unlike it has happened in another countries, where they remain in their original form. In Spain, the castanets have been adapted to the dancer or player’s needs, obtaining the ideal form for the good performance of the rhythms that accompany the dance and the singing.

The size and the decoration of the castanets is different and depends on the area and the use. In the beginning, the castanets were tied to the four fingers and shaken with the wrist. Also, for some kinds of Spanish dances, they could be fixed to the medium finger. But, in the XVIII century a great change took place, because of the new fixation system in the thumb and also for the boom in the Classical Spanish Dance, with dances like "seguidillas" or "boleros", all of them performed with castanets. It is in this moment when we can say that the classical Spanish castanets were born, and they are very similar to the ones that are used nowadays.

Characteristics
The name of the castanets (castañuela, in Spanish) comes from the antique Latin word "castanea", which means chestnut. In Spain, the castanets have some names depending on the different areas: "postizas" in Valencia, "tarrañuelas" in Asturias, "jotaneos" in Aragon, "pitos" in Galicia and "palillos" in Andalusia.The castanets can have different form and shapes.. Before fixing it in the thumb, there were lots of different versions of the sheet according to the region.A pair of castanets is composed for a macho (male) and a hembra (female). The hembra has a higher tone; it depends of the different aperture between the two sheets.

The sheet can be divided in the following parts:

- Heart (corazón): inner hollow.

- Shell (concha): down rounded part of the sheet.

- Ears (orejas): upper part of the sheet, with two holes through which the cord is passed.

- Hinge (puente, bisagra): the thinner part, the link between the two ears.

- Spot (punto): the place where the two sheets touch each other, in the shell’s base. It's very important for the quality of the sound.

- Lip (labio): is the strip between the heart and the sheet’s edge. Sometimes, it has a small embossing which separates the sheet’s ears.

The castanets are made of different materials: metal, ivory, bone, wood or pressed cloth, however the best material is wood. There are castanets made in boxwood, walnut, beech, lignum vitae, rosewood, ebony, chestnut tree, oak... But the best wood for the castanets, is the "granadillo", a wood imported from South America and Africa, which was used in the XVIII century and which nowadays is the favourite of the professionals

Whichever they are their characteristics, the castanets must be tuned up in order to obtain the best sound. The only way to get this tone, is playing them for hours, and then introduce them in a cover, a small bag that protects them from the environmental changes. The extreme temperatures and the damp are very harmful, and could cause splits and breaking in the castanets.