Kelseyville >> Jason Wright may be a successful flamenco guitarist, but 30 years ago he was just a metalhead kid aspiring to become the next James Hetfield. It was the early 1980s when Wright began strumming, and the first song he learned all the way through was Seek and Destroy by Metallica. Though he’s played a number of different genres throughout his career, it wasn’t until two and a half years ago that he left metal behind completely for the most challenging music he’s ever played: flamenco.
The music is based on 12 beat rhythms, Wright explained, as opposed to the basic 4 beat counts in rock and blues, the popular genres Americans grow up listening to. That makes flamenco much harder to learn for any musician who wasn’t born into it.
But that’s not all. In order to call themselves a true flamenco guitarist, a musician has to know how to accompany a dancer, a singer and palmas, otherwise known as hand clapping. And in flamenco, the dancer is to a drummer as the guitarist is to a bass player. There’s a close relationship there, one Wright described as akin to marriage.
It was exceedingly difficult, but Wright learned to play in tangent with a dancer, and now he performs with her regularly. “It is probably the hardest thing I’ve ever tried to do in music,” Wright said. “It’s an unspoken language and there’s only so much you can technically break down. The rest is feeling.”
For the past few years, Wright has studied flamenco under various teachers, and each can only explain the music up to a certain point. “I would say flamenco is more of an emotion or a feeling than it is just a style of music,” Wright said. “Some say it’s a way of life. You have to study the rhythm so much that you throw away what you learn and you end up just feeling it.”
Although Wright started off in heavy metal, Carlos Santana has been a huge influence from the very beginning. When he was first learning, he did research into who was influencing the metal music scene, which lead to blues, classic rock and Santana. The guitarist inspired Wright to seek out different ways of viewing the world, from music to culture.
But when it comes to flamenco there has been no greater influence in Wright’s life than Paco de Lucia, who collaborated with Santana in 1980 for a Grammy Award winning album. At the time he was unknown but in the years since, Paco de Lucia has become known as the greatest flamenco guitarist in the world, Wright said. He essentially brought the music to the U.S.
Wright, too, shares that belief. It wasn’t until he started listening to Paco de Lucia three years ago that he really decided to make the jump to flamenco. “I think he’s the greatest musician of the 20th century,” Wright expressed.
Even those who you’d probably never put in the flamenco category were inspired by the music, like Jimmy Page, who was recently in a legal debacle over mega-hit Stairway to Heaven. The chords he used in that song are the same as those in a Spanish classical standard.
This may be more common than one would think. Wright explained that musicians like Page and George Harrison would travel to Spain and secretly record flamenco musicians while they played.
Flamenco is a traditional gypsy Spanish music that came into being during a time of enslavement in Spain. Much like the blues, it’s a mixing of styles from all over the world, developed when a great number of people were flowing into the country. Influences include Moorish, African, Jewish, Indian, Celtic and classical.
And Wright enjoys playing the music precisely because of its breadth. “It’s so raw and primitive and it has all the elements that I love about metal and blues and all these other types of music I played for so long,” he said. “It has all of the fire and the aggressiveness of metal but yet it has all of the real beautiful sounds of classical and very complex rhythms of jazz.”
It seems that there’s no better place to be playing flamenco than right here in Northern California. San Francisco is a mecca for the genre, and the biggest flamenco capital outside of Spain, according to Wright.
While he struggled during his career in metal due to market saturation, since making the switch to the Spanish music Wright has flourished. He’s performing more often, making significantly more money, and in two and a half years he’s played some of the best stages in Northern California. He’s also signed to a label out of Mill Valley, released his first album and one of his songs has even been featured in a movie.
Wright performs at the Kelseyville Pear Festival today from 11:30 a.m. -1:30 p.m. He’ll be located next to Westamerica Bank. The Pear Festival takes place all down Main St. from 7 a.m. -5 p.m.
Jennifer Gruenke can be reached at 900-2019.
