2023-12-11 11:00:01
Carlos Nuñez, in the cathedral of Saint-Pol-de-Léon (Finistère), December 9, 2023. BAPTISTE KERRIEN
It must have been 1980, Carlos Nuñez was 9 years old. Under the oaks of the family village of A Mezquita, in the heights of Galicia, on the border which separates Spain from Portugal, the kid plays the flute in front of the assembly of a Romeria fiesta whose tradition is lost in the dawn of time. “I knew two pieceshe says. But the people were like in a trance, until 5 o’clock, they kept repeating to me: “Continue cariño!” I discovered that I had the key to joy, that I had this power. Even today, every time I go on stage, I am in connection with that kid. »
In the cathedral of Saint-Pol-de-Léon (Finistère), Friday December 8, clutching his bagpipes – a Galician gaïta – under his arm, with a hypnotic eye and a joyful smile, Carlos Nuñez takes the audience on a journey to magical energy. On stage: harp, lyre, violin, accordion, drum… joined by a few bombardes and binious kozh from Bagad de Morlaix and the large organs of the church. This Galician devil came to launch his new and tenth album, Celtic Sea. There is the profane and the sacred in this medley of traditional pieces, “symphony” bringing together all the countries of the Celtic arc in one piece. Alternately anthem, ballad or jig. Is it his fault if even Christ on his cross only seems to be waiting for a sign to start dancing?
Line of Exiles
It all began in Paris in the mid-1970s. The father of the flautist, a member of the underground Spanish Communist Party, who had taken refuge there, attended a concert at the Palais des Sports in tribute to political prisoners: “6 hours for Spain “. People like Paco Ibañez, Joan Baez and… Alan Stivell play there, whom he will meet. Much later, back in Galicia, when he had been sent to prison many times, the father, who at the fall of Francoism would become a municipal councilor of Vigo, launched a Celtic music festival… It all started there.
Or perhaps before, with the grandfather, a renowned pedagogue who, to escape repression, hid among the progressive and Francophile priests of Galicia, dressed like them, and venerated Voltaire and Rousseau – “who played the flute”underlines the music-loving scholar.
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A lineage of exiles, of men on the road, of resistance. The grandfather in question was himself an orphan of a father who played the tuba while tending the cows. In 1901, he left for Brazil and never returned. He is said to be dead. A century later, his great-grandson, Carlos the Celt, lover of musical wanderings, having reached out to the Andalusian flamenquists; looked for musical brothers in the Maghreb; having performed with just about everyone from Dan Ar Braz to Julio Iglesias, he in turn embarked for Brazil. And there, on the cover of an old record, he discovered a signature: José-M. Nunes (with an s, Brazilian style): the same first name and writings whose graphological analysis seemed to confirm a “second life” of the grandfather.
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