Mar
7
Spaniard Carlos Nunez pushes bagpipes’ boundaries
Filed Under EN
The world’s most adventurous bagpipe player doesn’t hail from Ireland.
Or Scotland. Or Wales. Or even France’s historically Celtic Brittany region.
No, the most progressive piper comes from Spain.
In Boston for the Revels Fringe festival tonight at the Somerville Armory and returning next week for the St. Patrick’s Day Celtic Sojourn shows, Carlos Nunez knows people don’t think of Spaniards as great pipers.
“People are told Spain is for flamenco, Mexico mariachi, Argentina tango and Brazil samba, but there’s more to it than that,” Nunez said from a Colorado tour stop.
“(Spanish dictator) Franco made flamenco our official music and wouldn’t allow (the Spanish region of) Galicia to explore its Celtic traditions and music. This kind of thing happened everywhere to bagpipe music.”
Nunez pioneered the return of the gaita, or Spanish bagpipes, to the region’s soundtrack. He estimates between 15,000 and 20,000 actively play the instrument in Galicia now.
As an honorary member of the Chieftains — Ireland’s legendary Celtic folk band — Nunez toured the world as a pillar of the traditional music, but don’t expect his repertoire to be limited to Irish pop standards.
“People look at a tradition like a cathedral, but if you look at these old cathedrals, they’re baroque on top of Renaissance on top of Celtic stones the druids used,” Nunez said. “Tradition doesn’t stand still, it’s always moving.”
On his global travels, the musician has taught communities to embrace their piping heritage — he points to pipers popping up throughout Latin America — while picking up tricks from different sonic traditions.
Nunez’s new album, “Inter-Celtic,” features detours into mambos, jazz romps and rock ’n’ roll. The musician planned to record with flamenco giant Paco de Lucia, but he passed away last month.
“It was a dream to record with Paco. We meant to record farruca (songs), the only piece in flamenco that comes from the Galician bagpipes,” Nunez said. “It will remain a dream, but I am forever thankful for what Paco taught us all. He told young players not to imitate him, that he had already explored that direction. He wanted musicians to go back to the roots and find old paths to take them to new places.”
This credo dictated Nunez’s experimentations, and he insists it’s where all great traditional music comes from.
“Maybe Mozart or Beethoven did it alone, but for us, compositions are built with little fragments, little pieces of DNA, little energies from the past,” he said. “I will play at a Celtic festival in Brittany and no one will speak the same language, but we’ll understand the same musical energy.”
For details on tonight’s Revels Fringe festival at the Somerville Armory, go to revels.org. For details on next week’s St. Patrick’s Day Celtic Sojourn shows, go to wgbh.org/celtic.
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