What a Master of the Castanets Can Do

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Mechanically speaking, castanets are simple instruments: just pairs of joined shells. You can slap them together. But Lucero Tena can do a lot more than that. She’s considered to be one of the finest castanet players in the world.

Here she performs La Boda de Luis Alonso at the Auditorio Nacional de Música in Madrid. Tena joins the orchestra at 1:10 mark. It is a full body performance. The music seems to capture Tena as she moves far more than just her hands to play these small instruments.

-via The Presurfer