Radio Tarifa was a Spanish

World music "World music" is an English phrase for styles of music from non-English speaking countries, including quasi-traditional, Cross-cultural communication, intercultural, and traditional music. World music's broad nature and elasticity as a musical ...

ensemble, combining

Flamenco Flamenco () is an art form based on the various folkloric music traditions of southern Spain, developed within the Gitanos, gitano subculture of the region of Andalusia, and also having historical presence in Extremadura and Region of Murcia, ...

, Arab-Andalusian music,

Arabic music Arabic music () is the music of the Arab world with all its diverse List of music styles, music styles and genres. Arabic countries have many rich and varied styles of music and also many linguistic Varieties of Arabic, dialects, with each countr ...

Moorish The term Moor is an exonym used in European languages to designate the Muslim populations of North Africa (the Maghreb) and the Iberian Peninsula (particularly al-Andalus) during the Middle Ages. Moors are not a single, distinct or self-defi ...

music and other musical influences of the

Mediterranean The Mediterranean Sea ( ) is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the east by the Levant in West Asia, on the north by Anatolia in West Asia and Southern ...

, the

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and ...

and the

Caribbean The Caribbean ( , ; ; ; ) is a region in the middle of the Americas centered around the Caribbean Sea in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, mostly overlapping with the West Indies. Bordered by North America to the north, Central America ...

. The name of the ensemble comes from an imaginary

radio station Radio broadcasting is the broadcasting of audio (sound), sometimes with related metadata, by radio waves to radio receivers belonging to a public audience. In terrestrial radio broadcasting the radio waves are broadcast by a land-based rad ...

in Tarifa, a small town in the Spanish province of Cadiz,

Andalusia Andalusia ( , ; , ) is the southernmost autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community in Peninsular Spain, located in the south of the Iberian Peninsula, in southwestern Europe. It is the most populous and the second-largest autonomou ...

, the closest part of Spain to

Morocco Morocco, officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It has coastlines on the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and has land borders with Algeria to Algeria–Morocc ...

. Instead of simply fusing musical styles as they are currently known, Radio Tarifa studied the common past of those styles, before the final conquest of Granada in 1492, when the Moors and

Jews Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...

were exiled from Spain. This invented style sheds light upon the real styles of Spain, most notably flamenco, although the band rejected all musical purism, preferring to mix arrangements of traditional compositions with their own melodies and combining instruments from Ancient Egypt, classical Greek and Roman times with modern saxophones and electric bass.Radio Tarifa website http://www.radiotarifa.com

History

Both Fain Dueñas (percussion, Spain) and Vincent Molino (flute, France) were students of Moroccan multi-instrumentalist and composer Tarik Banzi of the Al-Andalus Ensemble. Together they founded an early music group playing music from the late Middle Ages and Renaissance called ''Ars Antiqua Musicalis'', but this group was unable to attain commercial success. When they met Benjamin Escoriza from Granada a flamenco singer raised by Gypsies in

Madrid Madrid ( ; ) is the capital and List of largest cities in Spain, most populous municipality of Spain. It has almost 3.5 million inhabitants and a Madrid metropolitan area, metropolitan area population of approximately 7 million. It i ...

in the late 1980s, the last piece for a new band was in place. Their first album, ''Rumba Argelina,'' was recorded in 1993 and became a success in Europe when it was released in 1996, and again, when it was re-issued (through association with

Nonesuch Records Nonesuch Records is an American record company and label owned by Warner Music Group, distributed by Warner Records (formerly Warner Bros. Records), and based in New York City. Founded by Jac Holzman in 1964 as a budget classical label, Nonesuch ...

) in America in 1997. The critical and financial success of that disc made it possible to put together a full-fledged touring band which played in 17 European countries, as well as in Turkey, Morocco, Egypt, Palestine, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Canada and the United States". After 14 years of intense musical activity, the band announced they would take an indefinite break; their farewell concert was performed in Barcelona on 11 November 2006. - On 9 March 2012, singer Benjamin Escoriza died at the age of 58.Benjamín Escoriza obituary
Robin Denselow, ''The Guardian'', 14. March 2012

Discography

*''Rumba Argelina'' (1993) *'' Temporal'' (1996) *''Cruzando el río'' (2000) *''Fiebre'' (2003) (live at the 2002 Toronto Small World Music Festival) *''Live 25 July 2004 - Ramallah, Palestine''

Personnel

* Benjamin Escoriza - vocals * Fain Sanchez Dueñas - darbuka,

percussion A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a percussion mallet, beater including attached or enclosed beaters or Rattle (percussion beater), rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or ...

, backing vocals * Vincent Molino - ney, crumhorn, poitou

oboe The oboe ( ) is a type of double-reed woodwind instrument. Oboes are usually made of wood, but may also be made of synthetic materials, such as plastic, resin, or hybrid composites. The most common type of oboe, the soprano oboe pitched in C, ...

Guests

* Jaime Muela - flute, soprano saxophone * Pedro Esparza - soprano saxophone * Amir-John Haddad - oud, backing vocals * Wafir Sh. Gibril -

accordion Accordions (from 19th-century German language, German ', from '—"musical chord, concord of sounds") are a family of box-shaped musical instruments of the bellows-driven free reed aerophone type (producing sound as air flows past a Reed (mou ...

* Ramiro Amusategui -

bouzouki The bouzouki (, also ; ; alt. pl. ''bouzoukia'', , from Greek , from Turkish ) is a musical instrument popular in West Asia (Syria, Iraq), Europe and Balkans (Greece, North Macedonia, Bulgaria, Turkey). It is a member of the long-necked lute fam ...

* Jorge Gomez - flamenco guitar, electric guitar * Sebastian Rubio - pandereta,

bongos Bongos (Spanish language, Spanish: ''bongó'') are an Afro-Cubans, Afro-Cuban percussion instrument consisting of a pair of small open bottomed hand drums of different sizes. The pair consists of the larger ''hembra'' () and the smaller ''macho'' ...

* David Purdye - electric bass, backing vocals * Peter Oteo - electric bass * Javier Paxarino - flutes,

wind instrument A wind instrument is a musical instrument that contains some type of resonator (usually a tube) in which a column of air is set into vibration by the player blowing into (or over) a mouthpiece set at or near the end of the resonator. The pitch ...

External links

References

{{Authority control Flamenco musicians World Circuit (record label) artists Music of Spain Nonesuch Records artists