The Portuguese cavaquinho (Minhoto or urban) - a small chordophone with four metallic strings, a shallow scale of twelve frets at the level of the top and played in a torn manner and/or by striking all the strings that compose it - is still a source of great interest among scholars and curious due to its vast influence and undefined origin.
The truth is that even today this simple and ancient instrument is a prominent presence on the global musical and artistic scene.
In a plural age in which world music is widely expressed, it will be impossible not to mention the close kinship of this instrument with the Cape Verdean cavaquinho or the Hawaiian ukulele.
It is firmly believed, however, that this cheerful wooden instrument was born in Portuguese and Minho, certainly with broad Greco-Latin influences and other Arabic versions that date back to the time of the Muslim invasions of the Iberian Peninsula.
All these hybrid and global phenomena make our cavaquinho one of the most changeable instruments, transversal and permeable to the social environment, transferring to it an ancestry and an extroverted and cheerful character that transport us to a broad and rich bridge from the past to the future. 