David Gallegos

When I was first introduced to Nuevo Flamenco / Rumba / World Music.... I had always been aware of spanish guitar... but never really understood it much. I loved the passion behind it, the fire, and the intensity. I always associated that sound with *flamenco*... but once again, never really understood the theory behind traditional flamenco. I always thought that anything that sounded spanish, guitar-wise, was considered to be flamenco.... boy was I wrong. It was probably back in 1995/1996 when I met a guy named Joe Reyes... I was purchasing an 8-track multichannel cassette recorder from him. As I was leaving, he told me that he was in a band that played a sort of flamenco style... it was a spanish instrumental guitar band, and wondered if I had ever heard that type of music... of course I told him that I was somewhat familiar with it, so he decided to give me a cassette of one of his band's releases... his band was Lara & Reyes... and the cassette was Guitarras Hermanas. It was soon after that, that I found myself drawn to the style... and wanted more. A year or so later, I was at the local Border's Books & Music and found a compilation CD called, Gypsy Passion on the Narada label. It was like discovering gold... there were so many amazing spanish style guitarists that I was just absolutely blown away... Oscar Lopez, Armik, Lara & Reyes of course, Strunz & Farah, and Govi to name a few... but there was one artist, well two... that stood out the most.... Ottmar Liebert and Jesse Cook. The latter of the two which just consumed me the most at that time. Jesse's style was so encompassing... so hypnotic... I just had to hear more of his music, so the 1st CD of his that I purchased was Gravity... the songs on that disc were so passionate, so haunting, so unbelievably inspiring that I had to have more... and not only that, but I had to learn how to play like that. At the time, I was still in my progressive metal band Power of Omens, and we were in the middle of writing our 1st CD. I thought, what if I added a little *spanish* guitar to our disc... so I decided to add acoustic guitar soloing to the tracks "Alone I Stand" and "Test of Wills"... of course "Test of Wills" included a whole section that was devoted to spanish guitar... influenced by the song Malaguena. As we were wrapping up the CD, it turned out that one of the songs we had written towards the end of our writing was ruined when the tracks laid down by our former bassist (who had already left for his tour of duty with the US military), were accidentally damaged. Not wanting to have another bassist come in and lay down his tracks, we decided to go with a completely new song... one that had no bass tracks what so ever... it was my first attempt at a whole song in the spanish / nuevo flamenco sound... the track included me and our drummer improvising over some acoustic chord progressions. Simple compared to all the other tracks on the CD, "Tears of Wind" became the one track that would start the direction I would soon follow. As time passed... and the CD was released... many fans in the progressive metal genre, really took to the fusion of styles... and it was soon after, that I would receive e-mail after e-mail asking if I was ever going to do a full length CD in that style... well it took me several years, but eventually I decided to do just that. Aside from Jesse Cook, Ottmar Liebert and Strunz & Farah played a huge role in my influences as well... and after a long year of writing... my 1st CD, Mis Recuerdos was born. At that time, even though I had been listening now for a few years, the style was still very new to me... and I had no clue what the concept and true approach to the style was. I just pretty much thought... play a few chords in a minor progression, add some melody using the harmonic minor scale every now & then, and you have the style... once again, I was way off... but not the less, my first attempt at mimicking the style can be heard all over the 1st disc. Now, I consider that disc, more of a latin new age disc... rather than a nuevo flamenco CD. It wasn't until I moved to Dallas, did I finally begin to get a glimpse into the *real* flamenco world. I met a couple of guys by the name of Victor Garza & Pedro Partida... together they helped me to understand the basic foundations of traditional flamenco. You can imagine my embarrassment thinking the CD I had just releases was a flamenco CD... LOL!! Man, I had NO CLUE!!! It was then that I begin to learn about all the different flamenco forms... and realized the one form that drew me to Jesse's & Ottmar's music was the Rumba form... which unfortunately, was looked down upon by the flamenco world, and not really welcomed as a *real* flamenco style... but none-the-less, it was my favorite sound & feel.

Of course the more I learned about traditional flamenco, I wanted to incorporate it into my next CD. I fell in love with the sound and feel of bulerias, tangos, sevillanas, and malaguenas