Small, bright, and humped like a little camel

By Isla Quinn

Hold one and it feels like a toy. Then someone strums it and the sound is all treble, quick and sparkling, nothing like a toy at all.

That is the timple, a plucked string instrument of the Canary Islands. A blog on Lanzarote music says it is “barely 60 centimetres” long. Wikipedia calls it traditional to the islands and gives five strings as the standard form. A museum site in Teguise, on Lanzarote, describes a small, high-pitched instrument played by strumming with the right hand.

The hump

The back of the timple rises in a raised hump. The museum site gives its name as the “peta”. It also says the instrument once had nicknames, “camellito” and “camelillo”, little camel, after that hump. Our reading: the nickname is a fair description of the profile, and it is the quickest way to tell a timple from a guitar or a ukulele across a room.

The strings

Five, in the standard form. Wikipedia gives the common tuning as G, C, E, A, D. The museum site says the first and fourth strings are the highest and share a diameter, the second and fifth are lower and share another, and the third is the lowest and thickest. The two sources do not contradict one another. They simply describe the same thing from the note side and the string side.

What the strings are made of has changed. The museum site says gut at first, then fishing line, and now mostly industrial nylon or carbon fibre. The blog agrees on the end of the story, nylon or carbon fibre, and says animal casings came before.

What it is made of

The blog is the only one of our sources that names woods. It gives white spruce and pine for the soundboard, black mulberry and sandalwood for the back, ebony for the splint, and orange wood for the ornaments and rosette. It says early tuning pegs were made from dromedary or cow bone and that synthetic materials are used now. It also says some recent timples use no wood at all, which purists strongly dispute.

The museum site does not name woods. Wikipedia does not either. So the wood list rests on one blog, and we mark it as such.

Dates in order

15th century: the museum site says written references exist to small string instruments of this type.
1752: Pablo Minguet’s method book mentions the “tiple”. The blog and the museum site agree.
1760: Andrés de Soto’s method book mentions it too. The blog spells the name “del Soto”.
1792: according to the museum site, the visit of Bishop Antonio Tavira to Fuerteventura gives the first recorded reference to the instrument in the Canaries, where it accompanied the sword dance.
Second half of the 19th century: references become much more common, says the museum site. Wikipedia says production began in the 19th century.
Early 20th century: the name shifts from “tiple” to “timple”, through an added “m”, according to the museum site.
Mid-20th century: Simón Morales Tavío begins to build timples systematically on Lanzarote, according to the museum site.

Side by side: when did the first makers appear?

Question	Museum site, Teguise	Blog on Lanzarote music	Wikipedia
First stable makers	Mid-20th century, Lanzarote	First half of the 20th century, Lanzarote	Production began in the 19th century
Maker named	Simón Morales Tavío	Simón Morales Tavío	None
Origin	Likely European, possible African influence	European roots, possibly African influences	Not covered

We do not resolve this. Our reading: “production” in the 19th century and “systematic” or “stable” workshops in the 20th may describe different things, but none of the three pages says so.

Where it came from

The museum site describes a likely European origin, with possible African influence, and links the timple to relatives such as the charango, the cuatro, the ukulele, the guitarro and the cavaquinho. The blog lists the cavaquinho, ukulele, cuatro and charango. Both are cautious about origins, and so are we.

The four-string question

Wikipedia says that on La Palma and in northern Tenerife many players omit the first string, the D, and play it like a four-string ukulele. It says five-string advocates see this as less traditional, and four-string players say it reflects older practice from before a fifth string was added in the late 19th or early 20th century. Wikipedia flags that last claim as needing a citation.

The museum site takes the opposite line. It says some Tenerife players removed the fifth string and raised the third a semitone, that this is a local adaptation and not a separate type of timple, and that no timple has been built with four strings. The blog says some areas of Tenerife use four-string versions. Three sources, three emphases.

Teguise

The blog says Teguise, the birthplace of Morales Tavío, is home to the Casa-Museo del Timple, which covers the instrument’s history, construction techniques and cultural role, and that it occasionally hosts concerts. The museum site gives its address as Calle San Miguel in Teguise. We give no opening times.

What kind of sources these are

A museum’s own website, which is promotional in the sense that it describes itself; a blog about Lanzarote and its music, with no named author in our summary; and Wikipedia, which flags one claim as uncited.

What we left out

Living players, prices, workshops that sell today, and any wood list beyond the blog’s.

Quick answers

How many strings does a timple have? Five in the standard form, according to Wikipedia, with the usual tuning G, C, E, A, D. Some Tenerife players use four, per Wikipedia and a Lanzarote blog.

How long is a timple? “Barely 60 centimetres”, according to a blog about Lanzarote music.

Why is it called “little camel”? The museum site says old nicknames “camellito” and “camelillo” referred to the hump on its back.

Roam first. Shop later.

/sell-with-sephari/