How it started
It all Started as a Labor of Love, with the Desire to Give Back
Back in the days of Covid – we all can’t wait to talk about it in the past tense, can we ? – death, sadness and a breakup left me stranded. Nowhere to go, as the world stood still. Like many, I dusted an old guitar.
Looking for some tutorials, my choices narrowed down to a few YT channels. One of them was from a French Gipsy about Gipsy rumba guitar techniques and songs. The tone was unusual, heart-warming, relaxed and funny, the teaching was generous, with laser-like accuracy.
Few guys on YT have the talent to make you feel as if they’re talking to YOU, not adressing a crowd. This one did.
Every morning I would start the day tuning in to his channel while preparing coffee. It felt good. It cheered me up. From gloom to joy again.
So I gave back. I built a website for his band – that’s my job. Here it is :
Yes, it’s a French band (just like the Gipsy Kings are). They do travel for gigs. And if you are interested in learning the Gipsy rumba techniques do check Mr Tchavo’s YT channel. He’s quite chatty, never mind the language if you don’t speak a word. His explanations are visually very accurate, just focus on the hands. The language of music is universal, isn’t it? And what better source there could be to learn such techniques than from a Gipsy master ?
What Now ?
It did not stop there. Being a music geek, I started to look around, and found out there was nary a satisfying resource on the web about the history of Catalan rumba in other languages than Spanish and Catalan. None, nada, res.
Did the world of rumba Catalana end with the Gipsy Kings ? A great band, but the answer is : hardly.
I had some fun filling the gap, building a page about the history of Catalan rumba, knowing it would also help my virtual teacher’s band rank better in search results. And it did, in less then a week they were at the very top spot of your favorite search engine. (Yeah, that’s my job …)
I do hope it will bring them a few more gigs when time comes.
Speaking of which, I then found out that in recent years traditional rumba musicians in Barcelona were having a hard time finding gigs. Barcelona may be the capital of rumba Catalana, but all they could find were gigs organized by travel agencies. And yes, you guessed it, in 90% of cases they were asked to play Gipsy King songs …
So I built this website, for the world to find out there is a bit more to it. I wish you all great musical discoveries.
( And by the way there’s plenty of great content about the Gipsy Kings as well. You can’t blame them if they took the world by storm 30 years ago. )
And I am still learning guitar …
Support the candidacy to put the rumba Catalana on the list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Unesco.
