Where do you think of when you think of the bagpipes? Probably not Spain, but Carlos Nunez is here to show why you should.
Performing at CeltFest in Victoria, Nunez plays the gaita, a precursor to what we now know as the bagpipes. But despite playing such an ancient instrument, Nunez isn’t bound to ancient ideas about how pipe music can sound.
“This music gives you the opportunity to travel, physically, so we can really make musical pilgrimages through different countries, but also we can move through time,” he says. “So we can play Celtic music of today… with bagpipes and electronics, but we can also do it in a classical way.”
Based on popular understanding of where Celtic nations are, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Nunez is a passionate outsider, but this isn’t the case. Nunez comes from a part of Spain called Galicia, a region with a strong Celtic culture.
“It’s amazing because all this heritage is still alive, and the fact of being in Spain… it’s not a problem,” he says. “We have a common feeling, a common heritage, and it’s so strong. And it’s true that in Celtic music everything is about connections… Everyone thinks Spain is just flamenco, but Spain is not just flamenco. The flamenco is in the south of Spain, the Mediterranean part of Spain, but the Atlantic of Spain is Celtic.”
Nunez’s passion for this heritage has been consistent throughout his life. Showing a talent for music at a young age, his teachers suggested he try the region’s signature instrument at only eight years old.
“It’s a love story, you know,” he says. “It’s a very important instrument in Celtic countries because the sound of bagpipes, it has musical codes, deep codes of rhythms, melodies, it gives you so much information about the deep roots of Europe and also the deep roots of North America. As you know, in Canada and United states there’s also a Celtic heritage and we can see all this heritage when we listen to music.”
While eight seems young for someone to find their calling, for Nunez it was love, and he never looked back.
“I felt I had a mission to preserve this tradition of bagpipers, of people playing these beautiful melodies. And I fell in love immediately with the sound because it has an amazing energy; what I love in the gaita is the energy. It gives you so much positive energy. People after concerts come to me and tell me it was more than music, it was an experience to feel this positive energy. I feel sometimes a bit like a druid or a magician because you can feel really the power of music through this kind of instrument, that makes people very happy and very energetic and with this beautiful sense of connection.”
Having a successful music career with something so unique and specific as the gaita has taught Nunez about the artistic merit of chasing down your passions, no matter how off the beaten path. In turn, he wants aspiring artists to search for their joy in odd places and find what feels right.
“It’s nice to connect with things that are sometimes away or out of the systems,” he says. “If the system says, come on, you have to listen to this kind of music because this is fashion, you have to be fashion, you have to be like everyone else, this is the easy way. But maybe you are losing interesting things. I invite young people to crush those borders and try to discover all the things that are further away than the standouts.”
Carlos Nunez
7:30 pm Thursday, Oct. 10
$56, Mary Winspear Centre
marywinspear.ca