The Paraguayan harp is the national instrument of Paraguay, the result of the confluence of European and Guarani musical cultures.

It is a diatonic harp with 32, 36, 38 or 40, 42 or 46 strings, made from tropical wood, pine and cedar, with a rounded neck-arch, played with the fingernail.

The Paraguayan harp is constructed in three parts which are never glued or attached in fixed form; the head (also called the neck) the arm and the body.

The Paraguayan Harp weighs approximately 8 pounds and is carried via the “arm” the center pole which creates tension between the sound box and the “head”.

Each maker creates a proprietary and immediately recognizable variant to the exterior hand carvings or lack thereof on the head and body sides as well as the quantity of strings.

Dedicated players play only their variant of tuned string color codes, thereby creating two schools of harps, those with the red C and the ones with the blue C. In Brazil and Uruguay, the Portuguese Capuchin missions produced harps, guitars, and violins, based on 16th- and 17th-century Portuguese and Spanish models, for import to European royal courts.

These were handcrafted by native Tupi-Guarani workers who became widely respected in Europe for their fine woodworking skills.

The Spanish Franciscan friars who established missions in Paraguay were less successful in subjugating the Tupi Guarani Indians to forced labor.

Modern Paraguayan harpists consider themselves more accomplished if they can play popular hits, while the true measure of accomplishment requires performance of a handful of national harp pieces; "La Missionera" ("The Missionary Woman"), "El Tren Lechero" ("The Milk Train", based on lore about the first national train with a steam engine – the first in South America and a source of great national pride), "Pajaro Campana" ("Bell bird", a small, very loud bird, the national bird of Paraguay) and "Cascada" ("The Waterfall", composition from Digno García, referring to the Salto Cristal, located in Paraguari).