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Tonight, I lucked into some good seats for The Gipsy Kings at Wolf Trap. I've seen the Kings several times before, and Wolf Trap is a great venue for them -- there's something about hearing flamenco-style music in an outdoor ampitheatre that brings the music to life.
The show almost didn't happen, though. What with the torrential downpours and flooding in the DC area last night, the show was veering towards cancellation for a short period of time. Thunder and lightning started the consternation, but the wind blowing rain into the ampitheatre was the deciding point. It's kind of hard to play music with electrified instruments in those conditions.
In any case, the decision was made (coin came up heads?) and the group took the stage. I'd like to be able to tell you what the set list was, but I'm not sufficiently familiar with their material to be able to recognize all the songs in a live setting. Not speaking the language doesn't help much, either. This tour was in support of the Roots album, so quite a few songs from that disc were featured, as well as a number of their standbys. In any case, the show was about two hours or so of upbeat, energetic Latin/flamenco style music. There's something about seven acoustic guitars playing together, producing a vertiable wall of sound.
I know that traditional flamenco players don't like the Gipsy Kings all that much, and I can understand why. It's watered down from the traditional style (no 12/8, lots of extra instrumentation, etc.). While that makes it less pure, it has the side effect of becoming very accessible to the gringos in the audience. The crowd was very enthusiastic through the entire show, dancing in the aisle (more on this in a second), singing along as best they could and having a good time.
The dancing. The last few times I've been to see the Kings in concert, they have brought someone on stage to dance while they play (for some strange reason, almost always picking young, attractive women). While they probably have lots of reasons for doing this, I would suspect that part of the logic is that they are all in their 40's and 50's and have probably played a lot of the same songs for years and years. So bringing up a dancer on stage gives them something new in their show and takes some of the burden of entertaining off of the musicians.
The Gipsy Kings are playing again tomorrow night at Wolf Trap. If you can swing by, I'd recommend it.
-- Update --
The photos from the show are up.
-- Update 2 --
I did a little digging and found out who was playing at this particular show. Here it goes:
The Kings themselves were André Reyes, Patchaï Reyes, Paul Reyes, Nicolas Reyes, Tonino Baliardo, Diego Baliardo and Canut Reyes. Backing musicians were Xavier on bass (I can't find his last name), Cyril on keys (again, no last name), Stephanie Lambatte on drums and Rodolfo Pacheo on percussion.
So, I took a stab at trying to name who was who in each picture. I'm probably wrong, but I did make the attempt.
-- Update 3 --
Cyril found me on the web, and sent me the info on the backing musicians:
on the bass: Xavier Padilla
on the keyboards: Cyril Barbessol
on thr drums: Stéphane Lambotte
on the percs: Rodolfo Pacheco
Thanks for the update!
Posted by Casper at July 27, 2004 11:38 PM