"Río Ancho" is a Spanish flamenco guitar piece that combines

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, ...

and

gypsy jazz Gypsy jazz (also known as sinti jazz, gypsy swing, jazz manouche or hot club-style jazz) is a musical idiom inspired by the Romani people, Romani jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt, Jean "Django" Reinhardt (1910–1953), in conjunction with the Fr ...

influences. The piece is in the key of

E minor E minor is a minor scale based on E, consisting of the pitches E, F, G, A, B, C, and D. Its key signature has one sharp, on the F. Its relative major is G major and its parallel major is E major. The E natural minor scale is: Change ...

and progresses to

A minor A minor is a minor scale based on A, B, C, D, E, F, and G. Its key signature has no flats or sharps. Its relative major is C major and its parallel major is A major. The A natural minor scale is: Changes needed for the melodic ...

, D, G, C and B7. The original performances of the song had notable flute solos towards the end of the piece, reminiscent of classic Spanish gypsy music with trumpets. The track first featured on Paco de Lucia's 1976 album '' Almoraima''. In 1980, Paco de Lucia and

Al Di Meola Albert Laurence Di Meola (born July 22, 1954) is an American guitarist. Known for his work in jazz fusion and world music, his breakthrough came after joining Chick Corea's Return to Forever group in 1974. He launched, from 1976 afterwards, a s ...

collaborated and produced an ensemble track composed of Di Meola's " Mediterranean Sundance" from his 1977 album ''

Elegant Gypsy ''Elegant Gypsy'' is the second album by American jazz fusion guitarist Al Di Meola. It was released in 1977 by Columbia Records. Background ''Elegant Gypsy'' was a follow-up album to Di Meola's debut release, '' Land of the Midnight Sun''. The ...

'' with "Río Ancho". It was performed live in San Francisco on December 5, 1980, and the set was released by Columbia as '' Friday Night in San Francisco''. The collaborative version of the song consists of a relatively simple lyrical

harmonic In physics, acoustics, and telecommunications, a harmonic is a sinusoidal wave with a frequency that is a positive integer multiple of the ''fundamental frequency'' of a periodic signal. The fundamental frequency is also called the ''1st har ...

progression adorned by a flamenco rhythm. However, it poses technical difficulties due to the speed and precision required of Di Meola's picking on the steel-stringed guitar, playing melodic

phrases In grammar, a phrasecalled expression in some contextsis a group of words or singular word acting as a grammatical unit. For instance, the English expression "the very happy squirrel" is a noun phrase which contains the adjective phrase "very ...

, and to Paco de Lucia's fingerpicking on the flamenco guitar, as well as the exact matching of Di Meola and de Lucía's solos which frequently consist of them both playing a rapid set of matching or corresponding notes. They resort to many guitar performance techniques and fingerstyles, such as drumming guitar tops, strumming, bare thumb plucking, palm muting, tremolo picking, hammer-ons and pull-offs, sweep picking, vibratos, and

glissando In music, a glissando (; plural: ''glissandi'', abbreviated ''gliss.'') is a wikt:glide, glide from one pitch (music), pitch to another (). It is an Italianized Musical terminology, musical term derived from the French ''glisser'', "to glide". In ...

s. The collaboration was an instant success. A shorter version was included in the November 1996 album ''Pavarotti & Friends for War Child''. The 1980 version proved more successful, and the Mediterranean Sundance and Río Ancho track has been performed by Marco Porcu, Seis Cuerdas, Jorge Martinez and La Peña Flamenca.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rio Ancho Paco de Lucía songs Flamenco compositions 1976 songs