Roots involved a literal return to the band’s roots: the acoustic music they grew up playing at Gypsy gatherings across the south of France and Catalonia. Roots was an album of startling beauty, the raw, soulful voices of the Reyes’ matching the magical guitar interplay of the Baliardo brothers. Pasajero continues this journey, building on Roots while adding the fiery Latin American flavours long a part of the Gipsy Kings sound.

Produced by Phillipe Eidel (celebrated for his work with Khaled), Pasajero is the sound of musical legends celebrating their heritage. Across the album Pasajero offers great vocal performances from Nicolas and Canut and Andre and Patchai (a band with four master singers!) while those irresistible rumba-Gitano rhythms flow forth. Up-tempo dance numbers ‘Si Tu Me Quieres (Yes, I Like You)’ and ‘Mira La Chica (Look At That Girl)’ find Nicolas celebrating his favourite subject while ‘Sol Y Luna (Sun & Moon)’ allows Canut to wail those ancient Gypsy blues.

Pasajero is very much a product of the South of France’s cultural flux. Across Pasajero’s 14 tracks raw flamenco, jazzy guitar, Latin rhythms, Cuban pop, even traces of reggae and Arabic music weave together.

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GIPSY KINGS
(Interview)

Q. Please tell us who the members are in the band and a little about each person?

There are 8 members in the band:

5 Reyes - nicolas lead singer, francois (canut) backing vocals and also singer, patchai is also backing vocalist and singer with andre. paul does palmas and rhythm guitar.

3 Baliardos -tonino on lead guitar, diego on rhythm guitar as well as paco.

Q. You have been writing and recording music for many years, apart from the obvious influences from your cultural background, from where do you draw influences for your music and lyrics and do these influences change with each album?

Most of the influences come from the traditional flamenco. we also listen to the radio and the jazz and pop that we hear has brought some influence as well. you can see that in the line up of our musicians as we have drums, keyboards, bass and upper bass as well as percussion in addition to our traditional guitars.

Q. Love is a topic you often write about, what does the word “love” mean to you?

For us, love is family but it is also the search for the right person and that search seems to be a common thing for a lot of people who have not yet found their soul mate. We sing about love as a something that’s in everyone as opposed to a specific love interest; why is love difficult, why is love wonderful, these are things that we all share.

Q. There are 4 amazing vocalists in Gipsy Kings with individuals taking the lead vocal on different songs – how is this decided?

It’s really which vocalist has co-written the song and also it’s decided by the nature of the song for example who brought the idea of the song about, and how many vocalists the track lends itself to.

Q. There is incredible talent in the band, the way you play and use your guitars as instruments and percussion is unsurpassed; from what age did you learn, are you all self taught, how do you describe your playing?

It’s true that what we call ‘the compass’ – the way we play and hit the guitar - is really from the flamenco tradition and this is something that is being taught to the children when they are very young. Even as young as 4 or 5, they start to bang on the guitar. They actually start with the percussion and then learn to play the guitar afterwards. every young person in the gipsy’s community learns to play the guitar from a very young age.

Q. Who does most of the writing in the band or is it a group effort?

Most of the writng is really done by nicolas and tonino. They bring in ideas of their own first and then the one thing that really works as a group is the song arrangements as everyone brings ideas to this. after trying different options, we decide together on how to do this.

Q. The album roots saw a return to your roots, literally, please can you talk more about and explain why roots was so important to the Gipsy Kings and how it’s lead to the new album?

Roots was an album that we wanted to do for the long time as many of the albums done before were really only half done by us as we recorded the music and vocals and then let the producer’s finish the tracks. It seems every album was always around the same formula so we said that we wanted to do an album on our own which led to roots, more a traditional album with very little additional production.

It led to the new album ‘pasajero’ as first philippe eidel, our co-producer, loved the roots album and didn’t want to move too far away from it so we used the same idea on how to record the band, the guitars and the vocals. We wanted it to be more upbeat and wanted more diverse and happy songs.

Q. You have worked with Philippe eidel on the new album ‘Pasajero’, how was the experience of being in the studio with him and what did he bring to the recording process for you?

The experience was very interesting for us as he let us really work on our own for a long time. When we came into the studio we only had the backbones of a few songs and so just played and rehearsed and then slowly he started to get more involved when a song started to come together and worked from there on as a producer.

It was very fulfilling that he let us do all the advance work. Eidel watched and saw what we did and how we worked so he was able to learn how every member of the band brought something individual to the recording and song writing process. Everyone has a special skill that he was able to make work together as a whole. Then he worked a lot on the arrangements with us and that also was key to the sound of the album since we didn’t know whether or not we would use horns or violins for example or how we would enhance the percussion and all that came together with him to create the final sound of the album. we are very proud of the new album.

Q. In your epk you talk about using instruments from south america, can you tell us more about the instruments and their sounds?

Well we used the guitar charango, it’s an argentinian/ bolivian guitar used a lot in the andes as a rhythm and lead guitar. Canut fell in love with this guitar and started to play it all the time, making us all crazy! in the end we used it on the album. you can hear its influence in café, sol y luna and on some other different songs. We are even thinking of taking one on the road with us for the first time to get the influence of the sound in our live performance.

Q. You have toured the world many times – do you have a favourite city to play in and if so why?

We have indeed and we have many favourite cities as each country and each city is so very different. What’s most important is that we find the audience always fun to play for. There are cities we like but the audience is always the same – they cheer and they are really a part of the show with us, this is a worldwide thing which we all love wherever we may travel

Q. What are your touring plans for the new album?

Our touring plan is hopefully work more in europe as europe is close to home and we love to come home between shows. In the winter we love to go to warm places like south america so will do little bits all over the world as we have done for the past 18 years.

Q. If you were to sum up the Gipsy Kings in a short paragraph, what would you say?

We would say that the gipsy kings is really the follow up, maybe in a more modern way, to what our parents and grand-parents did as they were all musicians. So gipsy kings is really the set up of a new generiation, adapting and playing the rumba flamenca which has always been a family tradition through our history.