Piper taps Spain’s ancient Celtic roots
Grammy Award-winning bagpipe player Carlos Nuñez has played for the Chieftains, Ry Cooder and Sinead O’Connor. The master musician performs at the McPherson Playhouse tonight.
PREVIEW
What: Carlos Nuñez Where: McPherson Playhouse When: Tonight, 7:30 p.m. Tickets: $52, $47 (McPherson box office 250-386-6121)
It’s not exactly fake news. However, Carlos Nuñez says his designation as the “Jimi Hendrix of the bagpipe” is mostly a media concoction.
That’s what Billboard magazine (or, depending on the source, the Miami Herald) once called Nuñez, a Grammy-winning player of the Galician bagpipe.
Certainly it’s a catchy phrase quoted in his press bumph. But the Spanish musician insists it wasn’t hatched by him.
“Look, this [Jimi Hendrix quote] is thanks to all your colleagues, the North American journalists. The funny thing is, the European journalists do repeat what the North American journalists say,” Nuñez said with a laugh.
Hendrixian piper or not, it’s a sure bet that Nuñez — who last played Victoria in 2014 — is a master musician. He’s played with the Chieftains, Ry Cooder and Sinead O’Connor. He’s performed at Carnegie Hall. His 1996 album A Irmadade Das Estrelas sold a healthy 100,000 copies.
The Galician bagpipe (or “gaita”) is the traditional instrument of Galicia, in the northwest region of Spain abutting the Atlantic Ocean. Dating back to the Middle Ages, the gaita was played by the Celts. Variations of the instrument exist in other Celtic countries, such as Scotland (the Great Highland bagpipes) and Ireland (Uilleann pipes).
Nuñez grew up in the Galician port of Vigo, about the size of Victoria. He started to play the gaita when he was eight. A precociously gifted musician, he met the Chieftains as a 13-year-old schoolboy. They asked him to teach them Galician music. A month later, the Irish supergroup invited Nuñez to Dublin to participate in recordings for the 1990 film Treasure Island.
Although there are stylistic differences in the traditional music of Ireland and Galicia, Nuñez felt an immediate kinship with his new friends.
“The first time I played with the Chieftains, I could recognize home,” he said, calling from a tour stop in Twin Falls, Idaho.
Subsequent tours with the Chieftains strengthened Nuñez’s musical foundation. Along the way, the band’s global philosophy toward music rubbed off on the young musician.
For example, Nuñez once believed flamenco music was “the enemy.” That’s because Spanish dictator Francisco Franco forbade traditional Galician music in favour of flamenco, which he recognized as a tourist draw. Galician music went underground, only to resurface after Franco’s death in 1975.
“The Chieftains told me: Your music from Galicia, it sounds very Celtic. But why don’t you explore the connections with flamenco?’ ”
His mind broadened, Nuñez would later join the Chieftains and Ry Cooder in Cuba. There, they recorded with musicians in Cuba’s Galician community.
Nuñez notes that historically, the Galicians immigrated in large numbers to Latin America (South America has the largest number of people of Galician descent). He says in the 16th and 17th centuries, the bagpipe was hugely popular in Latin America, before being overtaken by the accordion.
Nuñez likes to think of traditional music as like a huge cathedral. Celtic music, including the music of Galicia, is akin to ancient stones found in its foundation.
Speaking of stones, Nuñez notes that the British Museum’s recent exhibition Celts featured a collection of rocks from Spain. They were inscribed with letters deemed to be ancient Celtic writings.
“In those stones, you can find the first Celtic languages ever written, thousands of years before the Gaelic of Scotland and Ireland existed. That’s important,” he said.