Is Carlos Nuñez really a “Spanish Irishman?”
The music of Spain varies from region to region, from community to community, probably even from neighborhood to neighborhood. In Galicia, in Spain’s far northeast, where the Celts ruled for centuries until the Romans supplanted them in 19 B.C. Galician music still retains a Celtic character and features the gaita, which is similar to Scottish bagpipes, the tamboril, which is a Celtic snare drum, and a Celtic flute known as the requinta Galega. Galica is home to the top-notch gaita player Carlos Nuñez, who you’ll see in this video celebrating his Galician-Celtic heritage and who is known, according to the biography on his website, as “The Seventh Chieftain” or, as this video describes him, “The Spanish Irishman.”
