Number 4 September 4, 2009

Each instrument does have a story. I used to pride myself on having very few guitars, usually one electric and a nylon string classical. I’d borrow or rent a guitar if I needed a 12 string or something different. But over the last few years I have acquired quite a few, and they all have their stories. Flamenco players tend to have quite a few guitars, as the technique is quite aggressive, and flamenco guitars are built to be very light, and are usually battle scarred at an early age. So perhaps it was when I fell in love with flamenco guitars that my austerity relaxed and I started buying more guitars. The first guitar that I commissioned was actually an Abe Wechter nylon string cutaway with rosewood body and cypress top. Abe was the head luthier at Gibson, and made many famous guitars for McLaughlin, including the Shakti drone guitar, and the nylons that John played in the 90’s. I gave that guitar to Celia Malheiros a couple of years ago; it’s now been all around the world.

The first flamenco guitars I commissioned were from Keith Vizcarra in Santa Fe. Keith builds for Chuscales and Otmar Liebert, among others. The first was a blanca, delivered in 1994, and then a Brazillian rosewood negra, a couple of years later. (Flamenco guitars were almost always blancas – cypress – until Paco De Lucia introduced the darker sounding rosewood negras in the 1970’s) Paco, like Miles, and Picasso, is one of the very few artists to have changed the way other artists are forced to look at their art several times in his career. Just as Paco says he is a flamenco player who is influenced by jazz, and sometimes plays with jazz musicians, so I am a jazz guitarist, who has studied and loves flamenco. Flamenco guitars are wonderful for jazz, and many of the great modern flamenco guitarists, Tomatito, Paco, Geraldo Nunez, and the great Vicente Amigo, are heavily influenced by jazz and rock, while still retaining their flamenco tradition.

Gregory James