The music of Spain has a long history. It has played an important role in the development of Western music, and has greatly influenced Latin American music. Spanish music is often associated with traditional styles such as flamenco and classical guitar. While these forms of music are common, there are many different traditional musical and dance styles across the regions. For example, music from the north-west regions is heavily reliant on bagpipes, the jota is widespread in the centre and north of the country, and flamenco originated in the south. Spanish music played a notable part in the early developments of western classical music, from the 15th through the early 17th century. The breadth of musical innovation can be seen in composers like Tomás Luis de Victoria, styles like the zarzuela of Spanish opera, the ballet of Manuel de Falla, and the classical guitar music of Francisco Tárrega. Nowadays commercial pop music dominates.
Paco Peña is a Spanish flamenco composer and guitarist. He is regarded as one of the world's foremost traditional flamenco players.
José Fernández Torres, known as Tomatito, is a Spanish roma flamenco guitarist. Having started his career accompanying famed flamenco singer Camarón de la Isla, he has made a number of collaborative albums and six solo albums, two of which have won Latin Grammy Awards.
Sabicas was a Spanish flamenco guitarist of Romani origin.
Francisco Gustavo Sánchez Gómez, known as Paco de Lucía, was a Spanish virtuoso flamenco guitarist, composer, and record producer. A leading proponent of the new flamenco style, he was one of the first flamenco guitarists to branch into classical and jazz. Richard Chapman and Eric Clapton, authors of Guitar: Music, History, Players, describe de Lucía as a "titanic figure in the world of flamenco guitar", and Dennis Koster, author of Guitar Atlas, Flamenco, has referred to de Lucía as "one of history's greatest guitarists".
Al-Andalus Ensemble is a husband and wife musical duo that performs contemporary Andalusian music. The ensemble features Tarik Banzi playing oud, ney and darbuka, and Julia Banzi on flamenco guitar.
Pepe Romero is a classical and flamenco guitarist.
Radio Tarifa was a Spanish World music ensemble, combining Flamenco, Arab-Andalusian music, Arabic music, Moorish music and other musical influences of the Mediterranean, the Middle Ages and the Caribbean. The name of the ensemble comes from an imaginary radio station in Tarifa, a small town in the Spanish province of Cadiz, Andalusia, the closest part of Spain to Morocco. Instead of simply fusing musical styles as they are currently known, Radio Tarifa went back in time to the common past of those styles, before the final conquest of Granada in 1492, when the Moors and Jews were exiled from Spain. This invented style sheds light upon the real styles of Spain, most notably flamenco, although the band rejected all musical purism, preferring to mix arrangements of traditional compositions with their own melodies and combining instruments from Ancient Egypt, classical Greek and Roman times with modern saxophones and electric bass.
Armik Dashchi, professionally known as Armik, is an Iranian-Armenian American New Flamenco guitarist, producer and composer. Several of Armik's albums have reached Billboard's Top New Age Albums chart. A child prodigy, born in Iran of Armenian descent, at seven years old he pawned his watch for a classical guitar, which he hid and practiced on in the basement. By the age of nine, Armik had completed formal music lessons as well as a rigid instructional regimen. At the age of 12, he was a professional recording artist. He launched his solo career in 1994.
Estrella Morente is a Spanish flamenco singer. She was born on 14 August 1980 in Las Gabias, Granada in southern Spain. She is the daughter of flamenco singer Enrique Morente and dancer Aurora Carbonell.
Michel Jureidini, a Lebanese guitarist from Beirut, was born in 1975.
César Nicanor Amaro Carlevaro was a Uruguayan classical guitarist. He was well known to many guitar players and listeners.
Integral is a limited edition, 26-CD box set of the works of renowned flamenco guitarist Paco de Lucía. All works have been remastered from the original source tapes.
Rafael Riqueni del Canto, is a Spanish guitar player and composer. He is considered as one of the biggest names or “Maestros” in flamenco guitar history. At age fourteen, he won the two main national awards for flamenco guitar in Spain. As an adult, he has won the most prestigious flamenco music awards in Spain, including: Premio Andalucía de Cultura, Premio Nacional de la Crítica, Giraldillo a la Maestría de la XVIII Bienal de Flamenco y el Premio AIE. In 2017, he was awarded with XXXI Compás del Cante, this award is always referred to by the Spanish media as the "Flamenco Nobel prize".
Pedro Javier González García is a Spanish flamenco, fusion, and classical guitarist, composer, and record producer. He has produced and collaborated with El Último de la Fila, Joan Manuel Serrat, Manolo García and María del Mar Bonet, Victoria de los Ángeles, and Angelo Branduardi. He has also performed at festivals with others such as B.B. King, John McLaughlin, Pat Metheny, Paco de Lucía, John Williams, Tommy Emmanuel, and Tomatito. Tempered and precise, he is one of the most versatile guitarists and composers in Spain.
Juan Ignacio Gómez Gorjón, better known as Juan Gómez "Chicuelo", is a Spanish flamenco guitarist from Barcelona, composer and director. Although he worked with a wide range of artists, Chicuelo is usually accompanied by the singer Miguel Poveda and singer Duquende, with whom he has toured extensively in Europe, Japan and the US and made many recordings with. He has also been musical director of Compagnie de Danse Japonaise Shohi Kojima since 1992, and musical director of the Somorrostro Dansa Flamenca with choreographer Javier Latorre since 2003.
Ramón Sánchez Gómez, better known by his stage name Ramón de Algeciras, was a Spanish flamenco guitarist, composer and lyricist. He was the most prolific collaborator of Paco de Lucía, his younger brother, recording with him on most of his albums from the 1960s to 1980s and performing with him throughout much of his life as a rhythm guitarist, including the Paco de Lucía Sextet, formed in 1981, which also included his other brother Pepe de Lucía.
Lester DeVoe is an American elite flamenco and classical guitar luthier who designs guitars for Latin music. He has been cited as " among the most in-demand flamenco guitar makers alive today".
The Guitarra morisca or Mandora medieval is a plucked string instrument. It is a lute that has a bulging belly and a headstock as sickle. Part of that characterization came from a c. 1330 poem, Libra de Buen Amor by Juan Ruiz, which described the "Moorish gittern" as "corpulent". The use of the adjective morisca tacked to guitarra may have been to differentiate it from the commonly seen Latin European variety, when the morisca was seen on a limited basis during the 14th century.
Antonio Rey Navas is a Spanish flamenco guitarist and composer. He is a winner of several national and international flamenco guitar competitions including the Concurso Nacional de Arte Flamenco de Córdoba, the Concurso Nacional de Guitarra Flamenca Niño Ricardo and the Concurso Internacional de Guitarra Flamenca Los Cernícalos de Jerez.
