The Gipsy Kings offer a king's ransom of riches in this collection of dance gems, ballads and instrumentals. Six synchronized acoustic guitarists strum standard flamenco chord progressions with the fervor of Django Reinhardt's
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Hot Club Quintet. Tonino "Golden Fingers" Baliardo creates gleaming lead-guitar lines, bending notes into minor-key Segovian filigrees and dazzling virtuoso runs. Sung in Gitane, a cryptic patois of Spanish, Catalan and Provençal, Nicolas Reyes's hoarse vocals wind from heaven to earth in a muezzin wail, conjuring up a soulful potion of Gypsy secrets, loves and suffering. The words are mysterious, but the message is universal. Stirring this ancient mix into a heady brew of syncopated salsa and African polyrhythms is a relentless rhythm section of electric bass, synthesizer and assorted percussion, propelled by vigorous
palmas, traditional hand claps.
A Top Ten hit throughout Europe (where it was originally released independently following two earlier albums), Gipsy Kings foretells one possible future for "world music." So listen to your good fortune, and let the Gypsy spirit move you. (RS 546)
JANIE MATTHEWS
This is the album that kicked it all off for the Gipsy Kings. When those first strains of "Bamboleo" rang out, a whole generation of American professionals realized that not only did they like to dance, they
needed to dance -- and eat paella, listen to neo-flamenco and drink sangria. All in all, not a bad ripple effect. "Djobi Djoba" was also huge.
