Search - Paco De Lucia :: Live in America

Paco's "LIVE" flamenco free spirit

Edy Gibert | Buenos Aires, Argentina | 09/12/2000

(5 out of 5 stars)

"If you enjoy "modern" flamenco music and Spanish guitar with a "free spirit", this CD is a perfect choice for your collection. Live in America presents 8 live performances including several of Paco de Lucia's classics like Zyrab, Tio Sabas, and Niño Curro, performed with his sextet during the 1993 East Coast tour. The flamenco ambience is very moving all along the 8 tracks and the concert's final includes the humorist theme of "Buana Buana King Kong which creats a very exciting flamenco climax. The sextet adds percussion, bass, flute and saxophone to De Lucia's sound managing to move flamenco into the free spirit of jazz-fusion. The CD's repertoire develops very much like De Lucia's concerts. Paco starts playing alone very slowly with his Hermanos Conde guitar, creating the mood for the night. Further into his playing, the hand claps and "zapateo", percussion, and then "cantejon" (the flamenco's singing style) incorporates progressively as the music develops. Live in America captures the magic and inspiration of Paco's live performances and my only regret is that this CD does not included more material played by the virtuoso guitarist during this tour. Nevertheless, the themes chosen are longer and more developed than the studio versions, thus display Paco's tremendous improvisation capacity which was developed by playing with different musicians from other music styles such as Al Di Meola and John Mc Laughlin. Once again, De Lucia proves that flamenco is a life style and a manner of feeling music, dance, and that his touch and personality go beyond the traditional sound of Spanish folklore. The themes played in this CD have a greater flamenco taste than other live CDs where Paco's orientation was closer to acoustic jazz-fusion flamenco. In summary, this material represents what Paco does on stage and transmits his flamenco free-spirit to the listener."